Did you get hit by the I Love You virus?

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Did your office freak out? Did you open the attachment? Are you still using Outlook?

Here's how silly my office is: we got warnings about the virus, and we don't even have e-mail at work. We have one computer in our library that has internet access, but no e-mail account or software. Two of us -- the people who work on the webpage -- have modems and share a phone line; we each use our own dial up accounts (which we pay for ourselves) and our own e-mail. No one else has net access at all. But we got a warning, anyway.

Silly.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

Answers

I work for a large healthcare organization - hospitals and drs offices and surgery centers from Auburn to Santa Rosa. We have over 30 exchange servers enterprise-wide. ALL OF THEM were intially bogged down, then eventually brought down by the virus. I guess that was the whole point of the virus, right?

Anyway... the security people freaked out and the exchange people freaked out and the whole enterprise freaked out. You'd be amazed at the number of people who are still opening the email as well as the attachment, even this morning. I just talked to a woman who had 27 emails highlighted to delete them but she clicked the wrong button and OPENED them all...

The joys of tech support never end...

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


Not only did I get a single copy of the virus (and I'm very glad nobody loves me), but it wouldn't have affected me, anyways.

Oh, how I love my Mac.

tes

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


Feh. Bad grammar.

that should read: Not only did I -not- get a single copy of the virus ...

though it might have been better said as: I didn't get a single ILOVEYOU email!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


I'm with Tess. Days like these make me proud to own a Mac. Well, I'm always proud to own a Mac, but now I can gloat about it.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

There are times when I'm smug about being the only computer literate person in my office.

Today ain't one of those days.

I didn't get the virus (I DONT open attachments AT ALL unless I know who they are from AND was expecting an attachment...)

Unfortunately, my fellow employees at our company branches in Richmond and Royal New Kent are not so bright. Neither are my fellow employees in Florida, Wisconsin or any of the other 17 branches of the company. As of yesterday afternoon, my office was the only site NOT infected by the virus.

This wouldn't have bothered me too much if we had any halfway competent people at the other two branches within driving distance... but we didn't. So guess who spent all morning driving around deleting virusii off people's computers? yep. me. I am so far behind on my own daily work that I feel absolutely no interest in doing it at all...

And I am not good about working with computer moronic people. Not very sympathetic, am I? No. You lost your files because of the virus? Too bad, you suck. Blah. I am severely tired and irrate.

If someone finds that virus writer, please smack him for me, okay?

KT

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000



Yesterday morning, I was barely awake when I got to work and opened my inbox, which is typical. As I yawned and saw that there was an email from my boss, Mary, with "ILOVEYOU" as the subject line, I thought I might be hallucinating due to the fact that I hadn't had my jmorning coffee yet. I rubbed my eyes, decided to open it like a moron while simulaneously formlating a polite way to rebuff her advances, and everything went to hell. Most of our building opened it, and our email and internet systems were shut down for the day, and we all walked around like elementary school children on the day of a fire drill. A little but excited, a little bit flustered, a little bit idiotic, and a little bit lost. Shame on me for thinking my boss was trying to flirt with me.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

Please forgive my heinous spelling errors in the above post. I'm obviously still a little bit traumatized by the virus.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000

We had one computer infected in my office. It was taken offline immediately (we got the virus alert seconds after it was opened. No I was not the one who did it.) and was not allowed to replicate mail, restart or open IE.

Tech support was notified, and they took almost 24 hours in getting back to us. This morning, I fixed it my own fucking self in 3 minutes, but they don't seem to care. They're probably going to send the machine back to Toronto(!) and send us a new one.

Fucking corporate America...

I FIXED IT DAMNIT!! Is this because I'm a girl?

And I didn't get a single email at home. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway. VIVA LA MACINTOSH!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


I work for Compaq Computer in the Silicon Valley. I heard about it on the news, and I know not to open attachments, so I wasn't too worried. They put up notices on the doors to all the buildings telling people not to open them, and sent out notifications.

Someebody in the company or somewhere must have opened one because there were virus messages were in my inbox, and kept they dribbling in all day, but I just deleted them. They didn't cripple the network.

Later in the day when I sent my boss my weekly status report, I made the subject line "ILOVEYOU...just kidding, it's status" which she found amusing.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


There was a flurry of emails from the German home office warning about it.

But well ... it's a Linux company and most folks are running Linux on their desktops, hence ... we just laughed off the whole thing.

Only the folks who use Windoze regularly had to keep an eye on their email.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000



I work for a financial services company in the eC group. (Or eBusiness as they like to call it now.) Since our work depends on Exchange and we were locked out of it, we spent the *whole* day doing nothing - but surfing.

I'm sure others in the company got work done, but we weren't one of those groups. Kinda made for a nice day. I was hoping this morning that the new incarnations would shut down the operation again!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


The guilty email that started it in our office was from a co-worker, so I didn't think twice about opening the attachment which, unfortunately, I did. Immediately, my Outbox started spewing out stuff, and my Inbox filled rapidly. After learning of the virus and the details, I immediately sent an email to everyone in my address book warning them to NOT open the attachment.

Eventually, all of my .jpg and .mp3 files got eaten. I received several calls and emails from clients saying they appreciated the fact that I loved them, but they just as soon wished I'd kept it to myself. hehheh

Partly Cloudy

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


I'm a contractor at Microsoft. Freak out is an understatement.

I got to work in the morning and there were print-outs taped to all the outside doors and inside all of the elevators (and on the free- drink cases and snack machines) and on the bathroom doors with big red text reading 'WARNING VIRUS ATTACK' splattered all over it.

The servers were made... I don't know - the equivelant of shutting them down. However - I did get the virus in my inbox 3 times - all from *internal* mail sources. There's a dumbass in here somewhere, obviously. You would *think* that they would have noticed the message while snagging a free breakfast coke. Duh!

As for me - at my last job our system engineer guy would yell and freak if we opened or played with .exe files at all - so I just started deleting them without even checking them out. It was either that or clean him up off the walls and ceiling every time he exploded.

Of course, I have a mac at home so no worries there at all.

A friend of mine - a designer - lost ALL of her hard drive stuff to that 'joke' one. DOH!

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


I was lucky, in that where I work, it's mostly a Unix shop. Almost everyone I work with, even the not entirely computer literate ones, check their email through shell sessions. The few others all use Eudora--I don't think a single person in my department uses Outlook. It's officially Not Supported Software.

That said, though, my job is doing computer security, so all the mailing lists I'm on for work flipped out over this. Apparently the newest variation on this virus has a subject line of "Confirmation of your Mother's Day order" and the attachment claims to be an invoice. That's wicked clever of them.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


What kind of stupid idiot would use Outlook these days? All the viruses lately target it...I use Eudora (thank you, UC Davis), so in the event I'm actually sent the virus everyone warns me about (I never get any), no problem.

The rumor I heard from my English teacher yesterday was that the virus originated on campus from the vice chancellor opening it (to quote the teacher, "What an idiot, he thought somebody loved him in his job!"). It apparently went rampant in the English department, but people mainly found it amusing, yelling out "I love you!" all day long. It hasn't affected school much. A Linux geek got it somehow (checking mail on Windows, maybe? I don't know) and the whole local LUG mailing list spent the day merrily critiquing the guy's code.

Though last night I went out to dinner for another Linux geek's b-day, and a friend decorated his present with penguin stickers. One had a bubble coming out of his mouth saying to open the ILOVE YOU (virus, crossed out) present immediately. It was hilarious.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000



You know, I didn't get one copy of the I Love You/Fwd: joke virus. Clearly I don't know as many people as I thought I did...or they all use Macs.

The sad thing is incidents like this don't convince IT departments that betting it all on Microsoft is a bad idea and maybe they should look into switching to Macs. No, they become even more attached to the idea that "Microsoft will fix this for us" when it's Microsoft's lousy software/system design that allows for the problem in the first place.

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


Here's a question...

No, I'm not stupid enough to open the attachment. I received the ILOVEYOU e-mail at work and promptly deleted it. Problem is, I delted it by right-clicking, and have since been informed (by our tech support folks) that the virus may be activated by opening or even just right-clicking the message - no attachment needed. Anybody know anything about that?

It does sound, from what you all have said, like I would KNOW if I had it..haven't had any problems so far so I guess I'm ok. Hope so, anyway.

I knew there was a reason I refuse to carry work home on disk :)

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2000


someone posted the goddamn i love you virus attachment on my forum topic concerning the thing.

i couldn't get in and edit it anymore, and ended up having to delete the entire thread.

what the hell. i don't understand people, man. really.

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000


We got an email message about it at work, but I never got it. Or the joke. Or the Mother's Day invoice. And I have a Mac at home!

-- Anonymous, May 06, 2000

Am I the only who was disappointed to see an ILOVEYOU that didn't mean anything? *sigh* Such sweet words...

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2000

I work for a big company, so I don't make the decisions about what email to use. Compaq & Microsoft are big pals, so I can't imagine that we'll be getting rid of Exchange any time soon. Except for these kinds of holes, I actually don't mind it and don't have an email preference.

99% of my work email is actually work stuff, and my luddite spouse barely uses his email account, so I almost never get loving email and wasn't dissapointed that this wasn't the real thing. Sad, huh?

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000


After seeing the warning posted on a neighboring office door, I got about thirty copies of the virus. After the tech support crew installed some kind of filter and rebooted the Exchange server, I got about thirty warning messages from their anti-virus software.

-- Anonymous, May 08, 2000

Back in office after a week of keyboardless vacation to find: 20 ILUVYOU viruses, 44 Fwd:Funny viruses, and some random small number of something with a longer name. Our corporate email servers were down the better part of two days while I was away -- or so claim the folks in my group who didn't email their status reports.

A little-known side effect of the ILUVYOU virus is that it infects mIRC. If you got nailed by the virus AND have mIRC installed, probably best to uninstall/reinstall mIRC.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2000


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