Thinking about Valentine’s Day yesterday brought back memories of the  ILOVEYOU virus from 2000. Anyone remember this virus?

For those not familiar with this virus, the ILOVEYOU virus originated in the Philippines in May 2000 by two Filipino college students and affected close to 50 million computers. This virus, was spread via email and had the subject line, “I LOVE YOU”. Once opened, the virus was sent to all Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express address book entries. Over a five-hour period the virus spread across Asia, Europe and the United States slowing Web servers to a crawl and overwriting various file types including .jpg and .mp3. Even the Pentagon and CIA were not spared from the virus’ wrath.

How can I not remember the damage this virus caused to my own computer. At that time I shared a computer with other family members and apparently someone opened the infected email in Outlook Express. All my personal photos, website images and music files were affected. In addition, my Windows 98 installation was no longer stable and I had to resort to performing a full reinstall.

Ten years later, the state of the Internet has changed drastically. Yes we are way more aware of the emails we may open. However, there is even more intelligent and sophisticated worms, trojans, spyware and malware that can equally wreck havoc on any computer and personal files. So what can one do?

More on online browsing safety is forthcoming in another post series beginning later this week.