March 2, 2004
Reply to All
So at work today, some e-mail virus started getting around. It was addressed to a group within the company that contains probably 10,000 people. Oddly, it had a pretty realistic signature from someone in our IT organization. Normally, those messages are littered with typos and the words please and thank you. Attached was a ZIP file with a bad payload. I don’t think anybody actually launched it because our corporate anti-virus was already on to it.
But what I found amusing was the e-mails that started blasting around once it started arriving in inboxes. I probably received 30 messages stating that this is a virus and you shouldn’t open it. Thanks, buddy. Then after that I got about 10 messages telling everyone not to tell everyone else that its a virus. So basically this now harmless virus, thanks to anti-virus protection, generated about (30 + 10) * 10,000…um, that is a lot of mail. I think that the “Reply to All” feature needs to require some sort of IQ test before you are allowed to use it.
Crazy. I still find it funny that Internet newbies love to take the time to forward (usually fake) virus notices or the urban myths.
I have to go. I just got an e-mail from some dude in Africa that needs me to help him deposit $10,000,000 bucks into my US bank account. Man, this is my lucky day. ;)
