Just one year later a teenager living in the Philippians proved that love does go a long, long way. It didn't seem to bother anyone that there was a love letter sitting in their electronic inbox from unlikely senders like bosses, clients or distant cousins from Alabama that once, three years ago, e-mailed a holiday greeting. How quickly lessons learned are soon forgotten! E-mail users around the globe happily clicked away without giving a single thought to the matter. To this day variants of the "love letter" virus remain well situated among Trend Macro's list of "top ten most prevalent viruses during the last 30 days." It's fairly safe to assume this virus can be called the single most widespread and fastest spreading computer virus in history, causing billions (with a "b") of dollars in damage worldwide. Media coverage of this love bug accurately reflected its significance. If one good thing comes out of "I love you," computer experts declared, at least the world would learn not to click on attachments that seem suspicious.
So now just nine months after the "love letter" virus reeked havoc the world has learned another valuable lesson. The world has learned that no matter how nonsensical, unexpected, suspicious and ridiculously illogical an e-mail attachment appears--say, if it claims to be a picture of some tennis star sent from your boss--there will always be plenty of folks more than willing to click. Virus-kind can once again rest assured. What were they worried about?
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