Opinion: Bang, you’re dead

We’re not saying you’d have to be stupid to fall for an email scam telling you that a huge nuclear explosion has happened in Sydney.

We’ll be generous and presume you don’t live in Sydney, so maybe you could hope ..er…believe it was true.

But if you live in Sydney, and you still fall for it, maybe you better go back and revise your understanding of nuclear explosions.

For starters, nuclear bangs trash all the nearby electronics, so you’d probably first notice you weren’t getting any email at all. That’s if you were paying strict attention to your computer screen.

A few milliseconds later you’d have noticed it was a tad warmer than usual.

Okay, a LOT warmer than usual. Let’s just say most of the people who fell for a scam like this shouldn’t be allowed out on their own. And they certainly shouldn’t be allowed to use a computer without adult supervision.

Then again, they have just created a windfall for all the resellers who offer virus removal services. And you can sell them an update while they’re in the shop.

Heck, sell them a fallout shelter while you’re at it. And maybe a tinfoil hat. Better get one for the kids too. And the dog. Those aliens love to probe all sorts of things.

While we’re quite sure these email scams exist – the good folks at Sophos don’t make this stuff up – we’d really like to see some stats on the success rate of the attached virus. Is this really an effective delivery mechanism?

Did it work? If it did work, what’s to be gained from the attack? You now own, sorry, I’ll get with the DefCon geek-speak program, you now own the PC of some morons. And you’re going to do what? Steal their money?

Heck they’d have probably just sent you their bank details if you’d bothered to ask nicely.

And unless they’re all the in-bred offspring of some billionaire recluse, last time we checked there weren’t too many total nongs with lots of loot to lose.

Okay, maybe you just want to control their PCs, make them your bot slaves for the next step in your evil plans. Good luck.

You think this class of idiot actually works? Or if they do, works anywhere you’d want to infiltrate? You probably just got total control of the local school for slow learners.

Does that make you feel good already? I guess that’s the real problem – the scam artists are probably operating on about the same intellectual level as their victims.

It’s the utterly lame talking advantage of the even lamer. And this is all we can look forward to?

The future of computing is nigh. Hang on, what’s that glow on the horizon? Nah, surely.....bzzt.