Malicious Mischief Mauls The Message Tree
by Ed Crabtree
Editor The Message Tree
ã2001-2002

      Remember those old "B" movies, back in those good 'ol days when everyone would load into the car and head out to the Drive In for the double feature on Saturday night? Those warm summer nights, cars as big as a Sherman Tank, two movies for less than the price of one at the walk in theater, intermission with movies advertising popcorn and all sorts of goodies to eat at the snack bar, yes, those days were certainly memorable. But those "B" movies, can you believe that we actually thought they were scary?

     For you young'uns that don't remember drive-ins and double features, the B movie, was the show that followed the main attraction. The second feature on Saturday night was typically a low budget horror flick, or "B" movie, that when compared to the standards of the suspenseful scary motion picture of today, would seem hilarious. The whole concept of the B movie was to make available to the owner of the Drive In, an inexpensive movie to use as an inducement to lure patrons away from the indoor theaters, sort of a two for the price of one deal.

     In so many of those old scary movies, the plot revolved around a villain or monster on the loose, terrorizing the countryside. The announcer on the radio or television which was always in the background of the scene would be warning folks about the danger of the creature that was the subject of a manhunt by the local authorities. The announcer would warn the characters in the screen play to lock the windows and bar the doors, until the monster could be apprehended, but in many plots this advice would fall on inattentive ears setting the scene for the creature to attack the unfortunate victims in the movie. This same scenario was played out recently here at THE MESSAGE TREE.

     The mere fact that you are reading this story is probably indicative that you, like so many of the rest of us are fans of that modern day phenomena known as e-mail. We have allowed that ubiquitous form of communication to ingrain itself so much into our daily lives that we are in some cases addicted to the medium. While our parents might have had a daily routine that started with a ritualistic cup of coffee over the morning paper, we take our Java alongside our laptops or personal computers while we read the Times, Post, or other newspapers, their headlines having been delivered to our monitor screens via e-mail. Of course we mustn't forget all the messages from our relatives and friends that sometimes admonish the recipient to forward the text on to at least 10 people on our address data base, in order to bring good luck upon us all, and we won't even discuss the "spam" messages that we all get enticing us to subscribe to web sites on the 'net that feature subjects that those of us that have had better "raising" would never ever visit via our computers. All these messages clog our electronic mailboxes and we invariably become so accustomed to only giving a cursory glance to the subject lines that we become like those players in the old "B" movies, totally oblivious to the warnings from the media about marauding e-mail borne viruses threatening to infect our beloved computers. And then disaster strikes and right before our eyes we find that an electronic monster is munching away at the hearts of our digital friends, our valued connection to the "wired" world.

     There I was, performing my morning ritual of starting the coffee then upon arthritic knees making my way to the home office where I always turn on the computer and connect to the Internet while I listen to the events of the day as told on the television cable news network. On this particular fateful day, I had completed the mouse clicks necessary to connect to the web and download all my messages, so while the computer was performing this task, I retrieved the first cup of coffee from the kitchen. After I had returned to the computer and started down the long list of e-mail, just like in those old movies, I was paying no heed to the warnings of the cable news anchor who was at that very moment describing a potentially dangerous e-mail virus that was wreaking havoc on the Internet. No more had the guy on television delivered the story on the virus, than the very subject of his news report appeared in my computer.

     No, I didn't open an attachment to an e-mail, just like we have all been warned not to do, but rather this particular virus manifested itself in the preview window of my Outlook Express mail program and started sending bits and pieces of all the files on my computer to everyone on my e-mail list. As soon as I realized what was happening, I turned the machine off and crossed my fingers that the damage was not too severe. Yea right, the darned little bugger totally wrecked my machine before I could do anything to prevent it.

     So I bravely unplugged the phone line from the computer and turned the machine back on, hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. When my computer finished "booting up" I realized that my nightmare was indeed a reality, the virus had removed vital files necessary for the operation of key programs and transmitted these to other folks that my Outlook Express had listed in the "address book." Now let me explain, only those of you that have received personal e-mail messages from THE MESSAGE TREE in the past might have been recipients of these e-mails unintentionally sent out from my computer. Those of you on the mailing list which we use to send out the announcements each month letting you know that the current issue is ready for your reading pleasure, were unaffected as that data base was in a separate program on a computer that was not in operation at the time my personal computer was hit. So we were fortunate that the virus did not damage our carefully guarded subscriber list. However all files that contained research materials and future stories for this publication were lost to the marauding monster.

     So after spending nearly 24 hours attempting to reconstruct all damaged files, I threw in the towel and gave up. So for nearly a week my computer was disabled and work upon The Message Tree ground to a halt. Finally my precious personal computer is ready to go back to work and resume activities, which would yield an April issue of this fledging publication, right? Wrong, I inserted a CD that happened to be in the drive at the time of the infection and when I was reviewing a file of what exclusively should have been photographs. There among the files of pictures, I noticed a strange file, one I was not familiar with. Do you remember the old adage, "curiosity killed the cat?" Yes you probably have already guessed what happened next, the unknown file was a leftover from the virus. This time I wasn't connected to the Internet and I had taken the precaution not to use the address book in Outlook Express and store any names there, so there was no infected e-mail sent out, but the damage was just as severe as the first attack. Another week lost to this malicious virus.

     At this point in time, April 2002 was history and we were well into the month of May when I returned home on a Friday afternoon to discover I had no Internet service. Several hours later and numerous telephone calls I found out that my Internet Service Provider had been in the process of attempting to make an orderly migration from the old carrier to a new and improved version and the old carrier decided to just cut my provider and all of it's customers off.

     Some of you subscribe to the large service providers like AOL or MSN, but many of you use the smaller local companies for your dial up services that connect you to the 'net. In this situation my dial up service provider, had contracted for computer and Internet related services from a larger nation wide firm, like most of the local providers do. The nation wide firm, as of late, had adopted policies that were inconsistent with the needs of my provider and the policies the larger company had decided to enforce were causing an unusually large number of complaints from customers and a public relations nightmare for my provider. My dial up provider was left with no choice but to contract with another firm for the services, and therefore planned a change of service that should have gone smooth and unnoticed by it's customers. Well the best laid plans of mice and men went awry when the larger firm decided it was not going to honor it's agreements for the orderly transition from it's service to that of a competitor's, and just turned off my provider and all their customers, like me. Almost two weeks have passed at the time of this writing and the situation is still not totally resolved, a resolution that would bring the home office of the publication you are reading back to any degree of it's prior normalcy. The Message Tree and The Wilderness Road of the Ozarks still do not have any e-mail accounts, by which you can contact us. More on the subject of e-mail elsewhere in this issue.

     Now you can surely understand part of the situation regarding why you have not received a recent Issue of THE MESSAGE TREE. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from this ordeal or at least take time to make some introspective observations. Have we became too reliant on this new technology? We quite possibly have, although the Internet promises to become a cornucopia of information and communication, a never before seen forum for the rapid access and exchange of ideas and data, a forum that has the potential to unite the human race as one people, individuals empowered with facts necessary to make informed decisions on issues that will shape the world of the twenty first century, the Internet also has the potential to lead us astray.

     Perhaps society as a whole has failed to fully grasp the enormous importance of the Internet and the impact that the use of the medium has on our daily lives. The disruption of service can have as varied effect on the users as they them selves are unique in their own respect. Consider this scenario; those of you that live in a community or are on a rural cooperative that purchases it's electrical power from an energy provider, what if your local utility elected to change providers and during this process of change over, the previous vendor decided to become spiteful, totally cutting off power to your community, leaving you "in the dark" until the local utility could reestablish service with the new supplier. Or what if vandals attacked the telephone company computers and disrupted service to tens of thousands of customers? In ether of these cases, the powers that be would insist on a thorough investigation and there would be dire consequences for the perpetrators of these theoretical situations. However in the case of the Internet we have failed to recognize the importance of this new form of communication and are oblivious to the potential problems that vandals or disreputable companies might cause from attacks on the Internet or unjust denial of service.

     Consider the 90 something, sweet little old lady that e-mailed The Message Tree for some advice and subsequently told us that the Internet was her sole "window on the world" and meant everything to her as genealogical research was her prime activity that she just lived for. What about the work at home Mom that has started a home based business so that she can care for her children and still make a gainful living, the 'net is her livelihood. Then there is the situation of the tele-commute Dad that has elected to move his family to the rural Ozarks in order to raise his children in a quality environment, and is dependent on an Internet connection to perform his duties and communicate with his employer. The common denominator in all of these cases is the Internet, which has made all these things possible to so many individual and unique people. When e-mail borne viruses or disgruntled corporations cause an interruption in Internet service, the consequences are great and far reaching. Perhaps we need legal penalties that make vandals think twice before sending out viruses, perhaps we need regulations that prevent companies from disconnecting paying customers, whatever the case may be we need to recognize the importance of the Internet and take action to protect this valuable resource.

     Although The Message Tree will survive and recover from these temporary setbacks, the resemblance of these situations to those old "B" movies was certainly striking. To say the least the ordeal has been not unlike one of those old nightmares on the silver screen, and even an enormous pain in the you know what. However you can bet that the next time we hear the news anchor tell of a e-mail borne virus, we will take heed and electronically bar the windows and bolt the doors in an effort keep the monsters at bay, just like in those old movies.