I have a confession to make. I once forgot to renew my vehicle registration. I was subsequently stopped by police, who saw my expired license plate. They towed my car, leaving me on the sidewalk with thousands of dollars in fines and a court order.

Fortunately, I had a friend whose profession put him in a position to help me. Help me he did, and I remained fine-free. I will be eternally grateful for his help.

I wish to make two points here. The first is that those cops wouldn't have pulled me over if I didn't have to drive around with that darn license plate on my bottom. The second is that when subsequent absent-minded episodes got me in trouble I did not expect my friend to help me out.

I tell you this because there is a rising trend in the use of computers by people who have no idea how to use a computer.

Computers used to be seen as private tools, like a calculator, a book, a pencil, etc. But now that all of our computers are linked, we are closer to the public virtual space that exists in sci-fi works like those of William Gibson (Neuromancer, Johnny Mnemonic). Thus, just as careless driving can hurt people, careless computer use can now hurt people too.

Of course, one is not likely to die in a violent computer accident; my point is that drunk driving affects innocents, and spreading viruses affects innocents. By blithely opening attachments sent to you by unfamiliar people, you infect your computer with a virus which then sends itself to other computers automatically. If you had not activated that virus, everyone would be safe. Knowledge is protection, just like prophylactics. Is it a crime to infect someone with an STD via sexual intercourse?

As use of computers becomes as important as reading and writing, and as more and more people depend on computers as much as they depend on their first language, this issue will become more and more pressing. Even now the issue brings up many questions.

People who are incapable of driving safely, or who drive unsafe vehicles, are not allowed to drive. Should the same be true of computers? The internet provides awesome power, just as driving does. Should its accessibility be limited only to those who are able to use it responsibly? Should there be a computer-use license? Would this be more fascist than driving licenses?

One result of this trend is that some people call up a friend or relative who is a professional in the computing industry every time they damage their computers. Those who open every strange attachment they receive are calling their computer-pro connections a lot, and those connections are getting irate.

All professionals figure the same way here: lawyers, mechanics, IT pros, etc. There's nothing wrong with getting help from a friend, but there is a problem with expecting it. Expecting a techie to fix your computer for cheap because he or she is your friend is like expecting a mechanic to do the same for your car.

Finally, regarding e-mails from people you don't know: they are NEVER legitimate. Microsoft will not pay you to forward e-mails, nor will they send you unsolicited "security patches". Opening an e-mail attachment from a stranger is the same as giving them your credit card information, except credit card fraud only affects you. Viruses affect a lot more people than that. And if you hate spam, never, for any reason at all, reply to a spam. Ever.

So, instructions for all unsolicited e-mail: delete, delete, delete.