The Gift Of Virus
from the silver-linings dept
A few months back there was a story about the e-greeting card “virus”, which automatically sent an egreeting to everyone in your address book when you clicked through the bland end user license agreement to view the card that you thought someone else had sent you (in reality, they just clicked through the EULA as well). Salon has a short story from a guy who was embarrassed that he fell for the virus, but who found a silver-lining in the virus. He immediately sent out an apology email to everyone in his addressbook, which he hadn’t cleaned out for four years – meaning there were plenty of people he’d lost touch with over the years. So, due to the virus, he’s ended up reconnecting with a bunch of people he had lost touch with. While it’s a nice little story, I’m not so sure it’s such a good thing. He could have easily sent out an email to everyone in his addressbook otherwise, without having to deal with a virus – and such an article may only encourage the idiots who use EULA viruses that they’re actually doing a good thing.
