FORTUNE -- Most of my friends do not take me seriously when I tell them that I no longer use e-mail as a primary mode of contact. That's because my main mail accounts were severely compromised by August's SoBig.F worm, the fastest-growing e-mail worm ever. I lost every subscription that I had to every mailing list I monitored. I lost countless pieces of correspondence. At the worst interval, I was reduced to a super-clean e-mail address used by fewer than 40 people. Its spam filters are withering, so some with HTML format as their mail never got through The Well, hosts of the service. I also relied upon news feeds from the RSS files generated on Web sites that I trust. I started running an IM client when available and discovered Trillian Pro which has led me to greater reliability for short messenging.
Cleaning up SoBig will cost billions, though SoBig won't come close to matching 2000's Love Bug.
According to Computer Economics in Carlsbad (CA USA), the worldwide impact of cyber attacks has grown steadily, from $3.3bn in 1997 to an estimated $12bn in 2003.
Christopher Tkaczyk -- "Crushing bugs" in Fortune, 22 September 2003.
Sent during morning tea in Mount Juliet, County Kilkenny, Ireland, using mail2blog Nokia Communicator Vodafone TypePad service.
x_ref1482 x_ref231ms
