AIDS Information Diskette
Some years ago, free with one of the magazines I used to receive, I was sent a free 5.25in floppy disc. It was quite a novelty at the time as floppies weren’t cheap and it was rare to have one given away. Anyhow, this particular disc was a bit special, it was titled “AIDS Information Introductory Diskette Version 2″ and suggested that the recipient stick it in their PC and run the DOS command to install it…
At the time the AIDS scare was just starting to become public and I guess the idea was that almost everyone would follow the instructions and try the disc - thankfully, I didn’t. It turned out to contain one of the early trojan programmes and it would, after 90 PC boots, encrypt the contents of drive C: making the host PC unusable. (Details are available at Wikipedia)
Anyhow the point of all this is to report that during a clean out in the office, I came across the disc again.
Whilst it has been taken from it’s original wrapper, it has never been used. In fact it’s the only 5.25 inch floppy disc I still have…. It could now be making its way onto eBay….
Filed under: Scams, Software, Techie
