I got a script virus in the email today (oh boy). First one. Eudora showed it as a PIF instead of the DOC the email claimed it was. And the headers - assuming they were real - showed that it came from gov.tw. Uh-uh. Don't think so. It hit the bit-bag pretty quickly.

But then I started thinking, what if the headers were real? It's possible, there's MS Exchange ids all over them, and the SMTP server could be compromised. That'd mean someone in a Taiwan government agency has my personal email address. Who is this person? What tortured path did my address take to get into his Exchange address book where it could picked up by a virus?

Wait-a-minute, buckaroo! [ominous music] This here email's from "Cybercop". That can't be good. Why would Internet police in Taiwan know I was anywhere in this part of the galaxy?

You know what it probably is? Some agency in the gov.tw range has an unpatched Exchange server. It got storked as a spam repeater that ended up shipping some trash to me. I reported it back to gov.tw via SpamCop. Now Taiwan CIB has a file on me.

[And that's how I became the infamous international criminal I am today, children.]