virus
long ago, joe and i talked about "Manners™, the polite virus". the email text is basically, "hi! i'm manners, the polite virus. please send me to everyone you know." there is no attachment. it relies on your sense of humor to propagate. of course we never actually created such a thing. but now, maybe we should make a virus that works like sobig. if you open its attachment, it propagates to everyone in your address book. then it berates you, "i can't believe you were so stupid as to open this attachment!" and it continues to berate you, "hey, dummy! i could have deleted all of your files! i could be spamming orphanages with porn!", until you get virus protection software. it will helpfully provide urls to several. if you delay, it sends mail to everyone in your address book again saying, "hey sally, your friend bob is a nincompoop who opens unknown attachments that send viruses to
you. please educate him not to do that any more. thanks."