Anti-virus Warning!

I read on one of our competitor's websites recently about Microsoft’s forthcomingentry into the consumer anti-virus market.

These days computer viruses seem to be accepted very much as a fact of life, like train delays or junk mail. They are so much part of the language of everyday life, that it seems hard to remember that they must be a fairly recent phenomenon.

Having studied various definitions, a computer virus is defined as a self duplicating program that spreads from computer to computer. Just like a regular biological virus, a computer virus isn’t necessarily that harmful. Many are mere annoyances, the IT equivalent of a stuffy nose. The ones that make into the headlines, though, tend to be more along the lines of virtual bird flu.

Personally, I haven’t had much experience with computer viruses, but the time I was caught did turn out to be rather memorable. For years I’ve been wary of opening email attachments. For much of that time this was due to the fact that my work PC was a Mac and most of the .exe stuff I was sent simply refused to work.

One day, though, I was sitting at my desk when I noticed I had a new piece of e-mail - nothing unusual in that. What was unusual though was that this mail was entitled, ‘I love you.’