DoubleTake: Even the greatest cyber idiot is unlikely to be fooled by virus-infested 'Viagra' e-mails. But some are more cunningly disguised than others, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
Malice is a like a game of poker, or tennis: you don't play it with anyone who is manifestly inferior to you. So wrote someone called Hilary Spiel, who was born in 1911 and so presumably is not around to witness what is happening on the web at the moment. Computer viruses - which could ruin your life - are being shot out into cyberspace, disguised as advertisements.
And I am so inferior in this struggle, so miserably unable to cope with it, let alone understand it, that I am a fish in the virtual barrel, I am collateral damage, I am civilian casualties reaching a level that is high enough to scare the Pentagon.
If you are not familiar with computers and do not have one, I apologise. This is addressed to all those people who are not familiar with computers and do have one. We're the people who are in a whole lot of trouble. Our little hearts still skip a beat when we press "Send". We get nervous when we have to cut and - whew! - paste. We're too frightened to adjust our settings. We're the quivering inadequates who comprise the cannon fodder in this shameless war.
To us, the world wide web is run, not by technological knowledge, but by human frailty. After all, the web's greatest business comes from pornography - say no more. It's like your car, or your television: very few ordinary people understand how those machines work, they just use them to get to where they want to go.
But the thing is that, with cars, at least, no one has worked out a way to make your average family saloon explode, quite randomly, as you are on your way to the shops. On the web they have. And they do. A recent survey in the US found that 80 per cent of malicious computer code on the internet is contained in online advertisements.
Even the Wall Street Journal is concerned. In last Thursday's online edition of that paper there was an excellent article, which I could almost understand, about how viruses have impregnated so much of online advertising that it is being commercially undermined as a result. In other words, no one's going to trust online advertising anymore.
This is interesting only insofar as it implies that anyone trusted online advertising in the first place. It is unlikely that anyone has opened their, er, hearts to advertisers who promise you "Safe And Effective Penis Enlargement". You can get 10 of those, and many more graphic promises, arriving to your computer, quite unsolicited, per day.
But they're not the ones that bother me. Advertisements which declare "We Are #1 On Line Pharmacy, Viagra $1" are not going to lull too many of us cyber idiots into a spurious sense of security - are they? They are blatantly junk mail, after all. No, the dodgy advertisements I really resent are the ones with the personal touch. Because e-mail is like snail mail in this respect: you are longing for an envelope to land on the mat which is not brown, and preferably has a handwritten address.
So, we come to the e-mail advertisements which tempt you in unforgivable ways. Like the one doing the rounds at the moment which says "a relative has sent you photographs to enjoy on-line". I do have relatives who do that sort of thing. They send me photographs of my much younger relatives, who are usually dressed in swimming costumes, for some reason. This could, I realise, look bad in court. Anyway, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that my adult relatives could have switched to a special photo delivery service. So I pressed "download" . . . and all hell broke loose.
The anti-virus software leapt into action, with much ringing of bells and blowing of whistles; anti-virus software is never going to be the strong, silent type. I was rescued from a major virus alert, it said, as I lay panting on the grass verge. The next day an e-mail arrived saying that a schoolmate had sent some photographs, and so on. Fortunately, computer hackers are not culturally sensitive: they do not realise that no one in this country refers to anybody as their schoolmates. Similarly, the false message from Barclays bank, asking for your account details, arrived here even though there isn't a branch of the real Barclays in Ireland.
It gets a whole lot worse. Some of these advertisements, whether impregnated with viruses or not, arrive addressed to you, using your Christian name. You can come in to work on Monday and find that 40 of these things have landed over the weekend. Blocking the sender does nothing to reduce their numbers: they come in swarms.
I do want to know, in a Hollywood sort of way, about the mindset of the people who create computer viruses - you don't think it could be Keanu Reeves, do you? But most of all, as a liberal, rational sort of person, I want them killed.