Were you hit by the ILOVEYOU virus? Have you ever received/downloaded a computer virus? What affect did it have?

-- Tim (tim@newmail.net), May 05, 2000

Answers

We didn't get the ILOVEYOU virus at home, but my mom got it at work yesterday. Twice. Isn't she popular? I've never downloaded a virus, but my brother, being the smart person he is, has downloaded about three. (THAT'S why you shouldn't download stuff from Warez sites!!). We tried to reboot our computer, and it wouldn't. All three times we had to re-install Windows. We did it the computer re-started in Safe Mode, so we could save some stuff onto floppies, but our CD burner doesn't work in Safe Mode, so everything we saved had to be under like, a MB. That sucked.

-- becca (mmi@home.com), May 05, 2000.

No, thankgod, I haven't recieved the ILOVEYOU virus, and I don't think I have friends dumb enough to open such an email anyway. Ah, but I don't believe that I am on anyone's mailing list either, which would distress me, but think of how few forwards I get. It's heavenly, really.

-- Denise (little_wiseman@Hotmail.com), May 05, 2000.

My mom got the ILOVEYOU e-mail twenty times at work yesterday. I guess she is more popular than I thought. One time, I stupidly downloaded something from a random person off of ICQ and it had a virus on it which crashed my whole computer. It refused to start, we couldn't even get WINDOWS to work. We took it into the shop and they said they had never seen anything so bad before. They had to wipe the disk clean and reinstall everything. After that our computer was 10x slower. Then about two months ago, it died. Can't say I am sad, it was a POS and we got a new cooler computer almost immediately anyway.

-- Amy (AmyAmyAmy7@excite.com), May 05, 2000.

No, but every single teacher in our school district did. :)

-- Rebecca (peka@att.net), May 05, 2000.

ah, nope, didn't get the ILOVEYOU virus. I've heard of plenty who did though. I'm grateful I didn't since our computer is on the rocks right now anyway.

it's already been infected with a virus once. I don't remember how it happened [I still bet dad was stupid and downloaded something funny since he opens all his email even if it's spam..ugh]. anyway, it was in the shop for a month since the whole harddrive died. we had to get a new one and now this one is sorta dying too. it'll prolly be dead in a matter of months if we don't watch it.

-- Amber (starlight@wellyeah.org), May 06, 2000.

Twenty three wives or otherwise (I've just gained another!) I've never contracted any viruses. AevilSteve got NINE of the flipping things. Luckily, his computer wouldn't let him open them, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do any work. Hang on, that's "unluckily". D'oh!

-- Zed, Who Always Has Safe Sex (zed@verbalvoodoo.co.uk), May 06, 2000.

Nope, no big scary virus, ever. Once we got one from someone, but I don't think it affected our computer much. I was away at the time, so I just heard about it, and not in great detail. I think one of our computers has a virus, but I'm not sure which one. Probably the dinosaur. It's not a big one, though, because it operates perfectly. Perhaps some day I'll run a virus check on it to see if I'm right. But I'm not bothered about it.

-- Sarah Joy (yojjeth@hotmail.com), May 06, 2000.

No, I didn't. Not at any of my 7 main email addresses (I haven't checked the 4 minor ones yet, but it's somewhat unlikely as no one knows those).

-- Helen (breathe@oceanic.nu), May 06, 2000.

Helen - I have to ask, if nobody knows the addresses, what's the point in having them?!

-- Tim (timp@newmail.net), May 06, 2000.

I wasn't... but my school was. I heard some dumb secretary opened the thing. It's kind of funny, because they're not letting the students use the computers until Monday. A.) We can't get into e-mail there anyway, and B.) The staff can use it - even though a staff member was the one who fucked everything up! Doesn't make too much sense.

-- Katie Trame (katie@misanthrope.org), May 06, 2000.

(first post!)

Last year, I got the CIH virus - the one that hit around April 26. It was horrible. I lost everything on my hard drive, and that night, there was a thunderstorm that further damaged my computer as I had forgotten to unplug it (I'd been warned so many times but I never thought it would happen to me!) I was computer-less for weeks and weeks, and when I got it back, they had accidentally installed Thai Windows. (I live in Bangkok.) So, I had to take it back, and have English Windows installed, and THEN my internal modem would not work. .... It was quite frustrating.

-- Kathy Macleod (kmacleod@thedorm.com), May 26, 2000.