I wrote once a while ago about the Klez virus, and how it was sending out e-mail messages from other people’s computers, pretending to be me.
Well, now I’m the one on the receiving end, a friend apparently opened an infected message, and it sent me tons of messages, pretending to be everyone in her address book — including people I know.
The really aggravating part of it was that my e-mail client or POP server was for some reason barfing on the messages, which carry the virus payload and are therefore quite large, and got “stuck.” I couldn’t download the messages to delete them, and the server was sure they were no longer there. And until I deleted them, new incoming mail couldn’t reach me. My e-mail system was constipated.
So I had to edit my e-mail spool file with a text editor to delete all the crap in my incoming mail queue. It sounds geeky and techie, and a pain in the ass, and it’s all of those things.
The 12 year old who wrote Klez deserves a special cell in a special prison. Fortunately, thanks to John Ashcroft and the spineless bastards in Congress, people who write viruses are now officially terrorists in the eyes of the law, eligible for secret trials and long, long prison terms…