A virus is a piece of information that exploits a security vulnerability in an existing complex system, tricking the system into propagating the virus to its ow

A virus is a piece of information that exploits a security vulnerability in an existing complex system, tricking the system into propagating the virus to its own detriment. Remember the word originally only applied where the target was a living cell. The usage where the target is a digital computer might have been considered a metaphor, but the deep structural similarity outweighs the difference in substrate, sufficiently to merit considering the new usage a valid extension. Zynga 'games' are viruses that exploit security vulnerabilities in the human mind. The extension of usage is just as defensible as the original extension to digital computers.