Flesh-eating bananas and other
e-vils
By Sheryl-Lee Kerr
ONE of the weirdest experiences about getting a new e-mail address
is the lengths to which complete strangers will go to inveigle their way
into your life. You’ll have people promising you’ll make thousands by
‘‘exploiting a United States Government tax loophole’’. Yeah, handy, that for us Aussies.
Or there’ll be a request to save little Jenny, 7, from a horrid
death if only one cared enough (clearly I don’t).
And you’ll discover sweet homilies about spiritual enlightenment that end with your threatened eternal damnation if you don’t send them to everyone you know and a few you don’t.
Sometimes Hell isn’t sufficient inducement to get people hitting
those Send keys. One phantom e-mailer promised me true love if I forwarded her mail and abject misery if I didn’t. (Scary one’s love-life can be so fragile as to hinge on a plastic button.)
But the e-mails that absolutely dumbfound me are the hoax virus
alerts. Yes, at any given moment there are teems of bored people sitting
around writing e-mail messages that all begin: ‘‘WARNING: Virus WIPES Hard Drives!!!’’ (The exclamation marks and irregular cases clinch its
authenticity.)
For those not in the know, it works like this:
1. A bored person makes up a totally fictitious virus called, say,
152iamSOgullible.
2. In a mass-warning e-mail, this bored person then carefully
outlines what 152iamSOgullible will allegedly do, being sure to make it
really believable:
‘‘Data will be wiped from all hard-drive files. It will also re-order your keyboard letters internally, with a letter defragmentation utility (LDU) so they start A, B, C, D etc not Q, W, E, R. It will then randomly alter the PIN numbers in your bank cards if they are sitting near your computer. It will play Pauline Hanson’s maiden speech on start up. It will leave the toilet seat up and kill your potplants. Further, it will genetically re-engineer your pets’ DNA to ensure they produce furballs and expel them into new pairs of gym shoes.’’
3. The bored person will interlace the e-mail with subtle and
non-hysterical tones: ‘‘This is a VERY vicious, DANGEROUS virus. It is
WICKED, virulent and never EVER returns its library books on time.’’
4. They will tell you how to prevent it: ‘‘Do NOT open the attachment gullible.exe. Delete this e-mail IMMEDIATELY. Turn off your computer and do not use any power outlets nearby. Most important: Do not use
any suspect cookie recipes when baking.’’
5. The mailer will threaten you to force you to pass on this mail.
Some take the threats a little far. According to the Computer Incident
Advisory Capability’s home page, some promise a violent death.
Like the Death Ray Hoax which begins: ‘‘A deadly new computer virus that actually causes home computers to explode in a hellish blast of glass fragments and flame has injured at least 47 people since August 15, horrifying authorities who say millions of people are risking injury, blindness or death every time they sit down to work!’’
Choice adjectives aside, Death Ray still seems nicer than the Flesh
Eating Bananas Hoax which warns banana-eating computer users of
‘‘necrotising fasciitis associated with bananas that will eat the flesh off
your bones ... (eating) 2cm to 3cm of flesh per hour. Amputation is
likely, death is possible.’’
I never realised death and amputation could be a side-effect of
office work.
As for new e-mail addresses, mine is below. Just spare me the
death’s-door kiddies and flesh-eating diseases by way of introduction. Well, at least until after lunch.
© Sheryl-Lee Kerr & The Advertiser, 7 March 2000