New Virus, Yow

This virus that’s going around trying to get you to click on a .PIF because it’s partial or has non-ASCII in it or whatever, it’s hitting my inbox harder than it’s ever been hit before. Maybe we’re watching a record being set; the mind boggles at the thought of the billions of these things that are swooshing around mailspace. The stories say the virus-hounds haven’t figured out what it does yet. Well, I can tell you one thing it does: mail itself to everyone in your address book, faking a signature from someone else in your address book. Er, maybe the world should stop using Outlook. Just a suggestion. [Update: Jon Udell writes me to point at this excellent four-year-old piece; the email client there is Outlook and he still uses it, and the way he uses it makes it safe. He’s right and I was wrong: The problem isn’t Outlook, it’s Windows.]