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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.
  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.