I got an email chain letter from a friend on the East Coast. Maybe you've seen it before:

Ann Hicks is a teacher at Palo Alto High School in California, and she is
doing this with her students for a science fair project, so help her out and
please play along. Thanks!

Copy and paste this letter into a new email (PLEASE do NOT hit "Forward"),
then read the list of names. If your name is on the list, put a star * next
to it. If not, then add your name (in alphabetical order, put no star.)

Send it to ten people and send it back to the person who sent it to you. Put
your name in the subject box! You'll see what happens - it's kind of cool!
Please keep this going. Don't MESS it up, please!

[Name list omitted]

After I'd forwarded it to some people, skeptical cousin Jack wrote:

>So,
>Um, what happens that's so cool?

Uh... I dunno? I got five emails back with my name in the subject line. I think we just provided a prime example of what hackers call "social engineering", aka "playing off people's basic trust in basic
social connections."

I'm a bit taken aback that I gave it so little thought before forwarding to ten close friends & relatives. What made me trust it?

First, I got the email from my friend Susannah. I also recognized another acquaintance's name as the person who sent it to her. There was nothing obviously viral about it and I think the mention of Palo Alto High School made me lower my anti-spam shields for a moment. I thought, "oh, what the hell, science students in Palo Alto*" and suspended my cynicism long enough to propogate the chain. The entire (lack of) thought process took maybe twenty seconds. Select all. Cut. Paste. Insert my name, as instructed. Click ten names from Contact List. Click "Send." Bada bing, bada boom. Move on to message #23 in the Inbox.

If I had spent about twenty more thoughtful seconds on this I would have noticed there's nothing about the mechanism of the chain that would lead to anything particularly cool happening. I don't see how Ann Hicks' students would be able to track the progress of the chain, except in the event that it clogs the internet and floods their inboxes with a google-plex permutations of name lists. Speaking of which, a quick Google-ing as well as a cursory search of the Palo Alto High School website reveals no Ann Hicks on staff. Maybe there used to be; maybe this is now a Flying Dutchman of an email, a ghost in search of its origins--but then wouldn't the name list be really, really long?

There's a serious implication here. Our social networks can be powerful and a wonderful celebration of community, as when you traverse the links across a web of Friendster or Orkut links to connect with new friends (if you want an invite to join Orkut, let me know--I'm in good w/the doorman.) And it can be pretty scary when the network opens doors for someone they're not supposed to.

Bill Gates says that computer users need to be more responsible students of technology and not do "naive" things like leave their home networks unprotected, open virus attachments in emails, click in the pursuit of a 10-inch penis, etc. I call this the Spiderman POV: With great power comes great responsibility.

There's another view, more like Ralph Nader's indictment of the 1960's auto industry: the Internet and most software just aren't designed safely enough yet.

I'm not equating this email chain letter to the Blaster virus, but the facility with which this chain letter slipped through my brains (and the brains of half the people I forwarded it to) gives me some pause, as does having a nine-year old daughter with an email address. With the shifts and permutations of recent viruses, worms and hacks, maybe the Spiderman approach isn't good enough. Maybe we do need shoulder belts and airbags on the info superhighway.

I'll see if I can get an audience with The Chief Software Architect to discuss.

BC

* Here's an interesting side question: does "Palo Alto" give it more credibility to people who don't live in the Bay Area? More so than "Cambridge" or "Redmond"? What if it had been "the Bronx" or "S. Central LA"? I remember wondering if it was a coincidence that Susannah had gotten something from Palo Alto, but not for very long.