An Open Letter to the Creators of the XP Defender Trojan Horse Malware Program

You suck, I hate you, and I hope you die from lung syphilis.

I knew your little program was trouble immediately. Warning me that I had virus problems. Urging me that I had to act right away. You weren't McAfee. I wasn't fooled.

And I wasn't worried. Because there were instructions online that told me how to purge you. Delete a file here, change a registry setting there. No problem.

Ah, but you were crafty. You knew that people had figured out how to beat you. So you changed names. You latched on in new places.

So I turned to experts. First, the brain trust at Geek Squad, who offered to take $300 bucks, lock my computer away for 5 days, and see if maybe that didn't fix things. Lacking confidence in their plans, I turned to yelp, found a very reasonable and friendly storefront operation less than a mile away, and placed my computer in their capable hands. All in all, I've got you on the run, you rat.

Sure enough, the computer came back working just fine. Or so I thought.

The first warning sign was that Chrome, my browser of choice, wouldn't open. Puzzled, I did some research and discovered that the programs my repair guy had installed to keep your evil at bay were also preventing Chrome from working right. So I made a couple fixes. But it still wasn't behaving right. So I did a test. Just to see what would happen, I danced with the dark side. I opened Internet Explorer.

And there it was. XP Defender. You rotten bastard.

From that moment, everything has gone to hell. The tech guy said I might as well just reboot the whole system. But we have to save all our documents first, and my wife and I have just had the most delightful argument over how to accomplish that. This will probably culminate in buying a whole new computer, which I hasten to point out we can't really afford right now. But a computer is the only way we can conduct a job search in order to get the money to fix the computer that you broke.

So there. I'm sure you are delighted. You sent this thing out, and the little rogue hunted until it found me and struck. And while you didn't make the money off of me that you hoped to, that's no skin off your nose. Hey, you're just a cankerous criminal, trying to make a living by hurting others. Ain't that America.

You have ruined my computer.

You are destroying my personal economy, which is already a wreck.

You are trying to damage my marriage.

Die.