¡¡¡°You¡¯d think after all these years I¡¯d know better than to spread a virus by email.
You¡¯d be wrong. ¡¡

¡¡The email was from a woman I knew decades ago, back when we were spooning teenagers. We had corresponded electronically maybe three times since then, I swear. The subject line on this latest missive was ¡°Homepage.¡± The message read, simply: ¡°Hi! You¡¯ve got to see this page! It¡¯s really cool.¡± It was signed with a goofy emotion, a winking, sideways smiling face-;0). ¡°Ho, ho! You sly thing!¡± I thought, recalling the feverish summer of ¡¯70... and clicked on the attached file. Pause. Uh-oh. ¡¡

¡¡It was the dumbest thing I¡¯d done since 1979, when I pitched a tent on a colony of army ants in Mexico. My screen started shimmering like a Yucatan sunset. I had unleashed a computer virus.¡¡

¡¡I felt like the doctor in The Andromeda Strain; the clock was outracing me. I went to my email program, clicked on File, then selected Work Offline. That, I assumed, would cordon me off from the Net and keep me from spreading the bug while I figured out how to get rid of it. Next I checked my Outbox. Argh! Sixty-five messages were queued up, waiting to be sent to my friends. Each was from me. Each bore the subject line ¡°Homepage.¡± Each had a file attached, as doom-laden as a warhead. ¡¡

¡iI deleted the messages and emptied the Recycle Bin. Then I went to the Web for guidance. Cursing myself for not using an anti-virus program on my home computer, I learned that the Homepage virus is the most common bug ¡ª technically, it¡¯s a ¡°worm¡± ¡ª out there. It afflicts only PC users of Microsoft Outlook and would not damage my computer. But it would immediately mail itself to everyone in my address book ¡ª that is, everyone to whom I¡¯ve ever sent a Reply message. The worm also resets your browser¡¯s home page to one of four porn sites. This last bit had not happened to mine. Was I spared? ¡¡

¡¡Gingerly, I fired up Outlook and connected to the Net. Fifty messages poured into my Inbox. Most were from corporate servers ¡ª such as Time Inc.¡¯s ¡ª informing me that my email was being returned unopened since it contained a virus. The last message was from my friend Marshall: ¡°If you don¡¯t mind my asking, which homepage?¡± Double argh! I had spread the accursed worm. I wrote a mea culpa warning, which I mailed to everyone in my address book: Don¡¯t click on that attachment!¡¡

¡¡The worst part was that many of the people I had emailed were newbies ¡ª subscribers who had emailed me for help in connection with this column. Most of these folks were kind; only one asked me to remove her name from my address book. A guy from the Philippines, birthplace of the dread Love Bug virus, wrote, ¡°It is quite ironic that I got a worm from you.¡±¡¡

¡I Let that irony be a lesson to you: Never open an attachment, even from a friend, unless you¡¯ve been told to expect it. And always use virus protection. Finally, if you get an email from me whose subject is ¡°Homepage,¡± run. ¡¡

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