Can I sue a company that sends me a virus?

Answer

This question was answered on August 6, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

Before you get “litigious” about your virus experience, it is important to understand the dynamics of e-mail based viruses.

Since many of today’s fast spreading viruses are capable of sending themselves without the knowledge of the user, it would be tough to prove that the virus was sent to you intentionally. There are two types of potentially harmful code that can hit you via e-mail. One is a ‘virus’ and the other is a ‘worm’.

Simply put, a virus requires human interaction of some sort to spread and a worm is capable of propagating on its own. The particular virus that you received (W32.magistr.24876@mm) is actually a combination of the two. It requires a human to open an attached file that has the virus, but once it is opened it will automatically propagate itself to other e-mail users. Any virus or worm that has a name that ends in ‘@mm’ is known as a mass-mailer; it silently sends itself to everyone in an Outlook address book.

According to Jeff Whitley with the <a href="http://www.weinberglegal.com/home.html" target="_blank"><font color="#003399">Weinberg Cummerford Legal Group</font></a>, which specializes in global intellectual property and Internet law, it is unlikely that you would have much of a case unless you could show intent. It is difficult to legally prove that a virus was intentionally sent to you, especially if it is capable of sending itself.

You may argue that the sender should be responsible by having a current anti-virus program installed in order to catch these viruses. But the reality is that no anti-virus program can protect you from 100% of the 5 to 10 new virus variants (variations of existing code) that are discovered every day.

And since the idiots that are creating the viruses can test their new creations with the current anti-virus programs before releasing them, they generally have the upper hand.

Your anti-virus program caught the bug, which is a good thing, but why did you open an attachment to an e-mail message when you had no idea what it was? Shouldn’t some of the burden be placed at your feet for not following the rules of the road?

My suggestion to you is to put away your lawyer and learn how to spot potentially hazardous e-mail before you open attachments. Most technical people have not contracted a virus from e-mail in many years by following these simple rules:

Rule #1 – Reader beware! Never open an attachment to a message unless you have prior knowledge of it from a previous message or a phone conversation.

Rule #2 - Always scan an attached file before opening it. Whether you manually save the attachment to your hard drive then scan it or use an automatic scanner, this is a critical process.

Rule #3 – Trust no one! The most likely sender of a virus is someone you know, because you are in their address book.

Rule #4 - Be paranoid! Consider any attachment to an e-mail message to be a ‘letter bomb’ until proven otherwise.

Rule #5 - If you are a sender of attachments, as a courtesy, get in the habit of sending two messages. If you have not had a verbal conversation explaining the contents of a forthcoming e-mail attachment, send a simple message ahead of the attachment that explains what is coming in the next message. It is a small inconvenience, but is a better way to help recipients decipher the good from the dangerous.

Rule #6 – update your anti-virus program once a week, especially if you are a heavy e-mail user. Most programs will now automatically update themselves on a schedule, so check your “auto-update” settings.

Viruses are a fact of life on the Internet and will likely become even more prevalent. The good news is you have total control over your own destiny if you learn and follow the rules.

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