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All of us who use Macs should politely ask
our Windows-using friends to do us a huge favor: Please
take our addresses out of your address books.
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T h e R o a
d L e s s T r a v e l e
d
Windows viruses are stealing the identities of Mac users,
too
August 27, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
I'm tired of computer viruses and
worms that steal my e-mail address from somebody else's
address book and then send themselves out to others under
my good name.
This is identity theft, plain and
simple. It's got to stop. The low-life cowards who
create viruses that steal addresses and the clueless
Windows users who allow it to happen are making me
miserable.
I'm upset enough when I find that
the e-mail address I use on my Windows PC has been stolen
and used in this way. But you cannot imagine my anger when
I see that the personal address I use exclusively for my
Macintosh computer has suffered the same fate. It, too, has
been stolen and passed from one infected Windows computer
to another around the Internet. The virus writers and their
unthinking Windows accomplices are making me the fall
guy.
They're doing that to you, too, of
course. I'm not alone in suffering from e-mail identity
theft. No one knows for sure how many Windows PCs worldwide
are infected by viruses, but I'd guess the total to be
50 million on any particular day. That adds up to a lot of
theft.
And it's all illegal. Isn't it
time for law-enforcement agencies to get involved?
My e-mail address is mine alone.
It's an essential part of who I am. No one has the
right to steal it. I've never given anyone permission
to send viruses under my name or e-mail address.
But this theft of my identity is
continuing day after day. Each day I receive hundreds of
e-mail messages from mail servers or corporate e-mail
filtering programs telling me they blocked a virus that I
sent.
Of course, I sent none of those e-mails.
I'm a good citizen. I don't pass along viruses.
Windows PCs run by clueless Windows users sent them. They
harbor my stolen address along with the illegally pilfered
addresses of many hundreds of thousands of other e-mail
users.
My Macintosh didn't send them.
Despite the fact that I use a computer that is immune to
Windows viruses, I'm listed as the sender of e-mails
that contain viruses ready to prey on Windows
computers.
Let me explain in case this is getting
confusing. The senders of all those viral e-mails are
hapless owners of Windows PCs who have no idea what's
going on. Their computers have been hijacked by the virus.
The only computers that can be infected by a Windows virus
are Windows PCs -- not Apple Macintoshes or Linux PCs.
This is more than annoying. It's
frightening. What if a virus stole your address and used it
to fake the return address on threatening e-mails? Or what
if it sent out plans for a terrorist attack using your
return address?
It's time for the government to act.
Virus writers should be tracked down and arrested. Those
who create viruses that take over the identities of e-mail
users should be locked up for a long time.
And all of us who use Macs should
politely ask our Windows-using friends to do us a huge
favor: Please take our addresses out of your address books.
Do it now. We've had enough.
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