QuoteVirus victims draw scorn of tech-savvy
By AMY HARMON
HoustonChronicle.com
When Scott Granneman, a technology instructor, heard that one of his former students had clicked on a strange e-mail attachment and infected her computer with the MyDoom Internet virus last week, empathy did not figure anywhere in his immediate response.
"You actually got infected by the virus?" he wrote in an e-mail message to the former student, Robin Woltman, a university grant administrator. "You, Robin? For shame!"
As MyDoom, the fastest-spreading virus ever, continues to clog e-mail inboxes and disrupt business, the computer-savvy are becoming openly hostile toward the not-so-savvy who unwittingly play into the hands of virus writers.
The tension over MyDoom underscores a growing friction between technophiles and what they see as technophobes who want to enjoy the benefits of digital technology without making the effort to use it responsibly.
The virus spreads when Internet users ignore a basic rule of Internet life: Never click on an unknown e-mail attachment. Once someone does that, MyDoom begins to send itself to the names in that person's e-mail address book. If no one opened the attachment, the virus' destructive power would never be unleashed.
"It takes affirmative action on the part of the clueless user to become infected," wrote Scott Bowling, president of the World Wide Web Artists Consortium, expressing his frustration on the group's discussion forum. "How to beat this into these people's heads?"
Many of the estimated million people who have so far infected their computers with MyDoom say it is not their fault. The virus often comes in an e-mail message that appears to be from someone they know, with an innocuous subject line like "test" or "error." It is simply human nature, they say, to open the mail and attachments.
But computer sophisticates say it reflects a willful ignorance of basic computer skills that goes well beyond virus etiquette. At a time when more than two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, they say, such carelessness is no longer excusable, particularly when it messes things up for everyone else.
For years, many self-described computer geeks seemed eager to usher outsiders onto their electronic frontier. Everyone, it seemed, had a friend or family member in the geek elite who could be summoned in times of computer crisis.
But the geeks' patience is growing thin. As it does, a new kind of digital divide â€" one that transcends age, race and gender â€" is opening up between populations of computer users who coexist in the digital world.
"Viruses are just the tip of the iceberg," said Bill Melcher, who runs his own technical support business in San Francisco. "When it comes to computers, a lot of intelligent people and fast learners just decide that they don't know."
Many of the computationally confused say they suffer from genuine intimidation and panic over how to handle the mysterious machines they have come to rely on for so much of daily life. Virus writers and spammers, they say, are the ones who should be held accountable for the chaos they cause.
But as the same people equip themselves with fancy multimedia computers, critics charge that their perpetual state of confusion has begun to look more than a trifle self-serving.
And while the Internet's more traditional villains are anonymous and elusive, those on the other side of this divide tend to be friends and neighbors.
Some in the techno-camp imagine requiring a license to operate a computer, just like to drive a car.
Others are calling for a punishment that fits a careless crime. People who click on virus attachments, for instance, could automatically be cut off by their Internet service providers until they proved that their machines had been disinfected.
And some, tired of being treated like free help lines, are beginning to rebel. They are telling friends, relatives and random acquaintances to figure it out on their own.
"Go out, get a book," suggests Zack Rubenstein, 28, who has for years provided free technical support for the technically naive in his extended social network. "You went to college and you got a degree, you obviously can learn something. Play around with it; it's not going to kill you."
Make everyone who wants to own a Internet connected piece of hardware take a test and get a licence. No licence? Then no PC, which would put PC world out of business in 24 hrs :devil:
"Play around with it; it's not going to kill you." Very, very true but..........In order to 'play around with it' you have to have an interest in computers and an inquisitive nature. Most, if not all, of these people don't give a toss about computers in the same way that many car owners don't give a toss about what goes on under the bonnet. You can't make folk become geeks or petrol heads. But I do agree, keeping yourself virus free ain't no big deal. I'm amazed that so many people don't have a virus checker. How difficult is it to let Norton or whoever look after things? :rolleyes:
If you do not have a virus checker here is a way of looking at an email safely:
1. Ensure that the preview pane is not enabled in your mail client.
2. Click once on the email then select file, save as, and choose text as the file type.
3. Save to to your desktop and open the text file.
Any email I am unsure of I use the above technique. I have found a couple of emails that were legit but looked dodgy and millions that were actually dodgy. Still that's what I get for hacking Benny's mail file :D
or just go to a site like this (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp)
So whats wrong with having a virus - its never done me any harm :P
Bugga - more importantly wheres me avatar gone ??