Do you ever write out a long list of who your friends are and think about them, one by one? I do. I ask myself questions like, “who would back me up in a bar fight?” One day I came up with the question, “who really trusts me?” And I came up with a test. Here’s what you do:
- Write a Trojan horse virus. Or better yet, use a pre-made one on the Internet.
- Email it to your friends. Say something innocent like, “hey check out this program I wrote. You can run a virus scanner if you don’t trust me. It’s legit.”
- See if you they actually ran the executable or if they had to virus scan it first.
If they scanned it and realized that you sent them a virus, then they’re a jerk. If they executed it, then you’re the jerk… but you get to find out what kind of crazy stuff they have on their computers! One of my roommates — let’s call him M Lynch… no that’s too obvious… Mike L — I found poems that he wrote for his cat Flufferbutters.
After that time I snooped around his room and found the cat poems, I just HAD to see if he had crazier stuff on his computer. Too bad he scanned the file. How about that. He doesn’t trust me to send him a safe executable, but he trusts me enough to only lock his door with a lock that can be cut with bolt cutters.
Oh, and if you’re wondering if this really works, let me tell you that it does. I trusted Shawn Fanning… until he stole Napster from me.
