Amazed by SoBig
The SoBig virus seems to be spreading unabated. I've got some pretty good e-mail rules set up to filter out actual instances of the virus and bounced e-mail from forged instances claiming to be from me to some false e-mail address. Unfortunately, I can't easily filter SoBig messages forged from me to some support e-mail address, and so I get a lot of auto-responder e-mail back to me. In fact, yesterday I was subscribed to some church music mailing list because of the virus, and I actually received several list messages (around 10) in the span of 30 minutes before I was able to successfully unsubscribe. Most e-mail lists have an opt-in e-mail to avoid having friends subscribe you as a prank, but this list apparently did not.
But the thing that blows my mind is this: I'm receiving at least 1.5 e-mail messages a minute related to SoBig, according to my filters. That's almost 90 an hour. How many fucking morons out there have not bothered to patch their installs of Windows since this flaw was fixed almost 2 years ago? I tend to agree with Microsoft and their recent initiative - users should be forced to install critical Windows updates. It's one thing if you're only hurting yourself by being behind, it's quite another if your apathy causes widespread problems.