But if you did want to purposefully execute code, you’re saying a mail client shouldn’t let you open an attachment by design? As far as I remember, this wasn’t

But if you did want to purposefully execute code, you’re saying a mail client shouldn’t let you open an attachment by design? As far as I remember, this wasn’t a more advanced virus that self-executed upon being opened. People had to willingly double-click the VBS file. The self-replication and use of the address book was clever — and it was a definite Windows flaw that ultimately allowed it all to work — but I don’t think allowing people to willfully execute an attachment is a flaw. It was after Melissa and this incident that you started seeing the very public campaigns telling people not to open unknown or weird attachments. And AV vendors like Norton started doing more robust AV updates online (rather than selling new virus definitions on floppy disk or CD-ROM) each year. Norton was already doing online definition updates in 2000, but I seem to recall (I was 16 so my memory is fuzzy) the updates becoming more frequent. I do remember having to install ILoveYou patches on my dad’s computer and my uncle’s computer down the street. I’m also pretty sure this was one of the viruses we purposefully sent around our high school’s network that helped get the entire county infected. Novell’s enterprise rules didn’t catch up until it was too late.