If you know any hackers who create these viruses, please tell them for me I'd like to break their fingers, one by one, until they stop.
This virus was like a bad joke, a prank. It changed certain character names in my novel to "I," so that a sentence that might have read "John hated Jeannie" now read "I hated Jeannie." The sentences still made sense, but their meaning was changed.
It was maddening. I am now going through 100 pages of edited work, line by line, sentence by sentence, to double check. And I will have to keep an eye out for these weird changes in the rest of the 650-page typescript.
Yargh. Of course, it could have been worse. At least, the hacker didn't destroy the whole book.
My advice: always have a good, up-to-date antivirus program installed and working. I use Trend Micro (which I must have mis-installed), but Phil, my computer guru, recommends Norton, by Symantec.
Either way, don't go online without one.
© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle
