Office of Stupidity Security

Came into the office today to discover 155 messages in my blind "Webmaster" inbox. They were all (except for one, written in Spanglish, asking information about a patient that would be a HIPAA violation to give out) variations of the newest e-mail virus.

You know the one. The one that has a subject line of test, and an attachment of about 30K? You have to open the attachment and unzip a file, then run the exe file to infect yourself.

I guess there are people using computers who do just that (asshats). Christ, even my 86-year old father, who has never in his life even turned a computer on, knows better than that. Even he knows about computer viruses and how one gets them and how one never opens e-mail attachments.

But there's 154 virus e-mails in my in box. My personal e-mail is crawling at a salted slug's pace today, because the servers are clogged with virus-laden e-mail.

I swear, how do these people live? How do they operate heavy machinery, or even lap tops, huh? Even Oprah must have talked about computer viruses at some point. Even the Star or the Weekly World News has to have covered the issue.

So why, in the name of all that is holy, do people insist on opening bogus e-mail, and launching the bogus attachments? Surely by now, they know that when the body of the mail says something like "This my first game. I hope you like it." or "Testing." or "You first to see new thing. Open fast and enjoy!" that nothing good is going to come from opening the files.

Well, you'd think that, but you'd be wrong. I've gotten 157 (they're still coming in, even as I type) messages to prove you wrong.

PS-- Voting is still open in BlogMadness, and I still need your votes. Please? I'm down on my knees, I'm begging you please. I'm number #18, Back Home.