Part I

Please seriously entertain my claim that the article is not to inform computer users about how to avoid 'malware' but, instead, is just a case of a standard practice in journalism to distort a real situation to create uninformed fears to grab people by the gut to get their eyeballs for the ads.

In particular, the article is very far from reality about computer security.

Next, you are just not reading; instead, you wrote:

"You are sorely mistaken. First, the article clearly states that the user downloaded and opened the file. It was not some automatic process put into motion by the mere fact that someone emailed him, as you suggest in your rant."

Totally, flatly, clearly, absolutely wrong. Your "and opened the file" is just wrong. The article never said any such thing. I just went through the whole article and looked at every case of the string 'open', and at no point did the article mention that the file was open or opened. And in the first paragraph with the start of the story, nothing like 'opened' was described or even implied.

Instead, the situation in the article was just as I quoted in the key statement from the first paragraph of the article:

"The man clicked on the message, downloaded the attached Excel spreadsheet file, and unwittingly set in motion a chain of events allowing hackers to raid the computer networks of his employer, RSA."

There is nothing here about 'open' in any sense.

Indeed, if this sentence were correct, then with any decent e-mail software his computer would have been quite safe.

Of course, "downloaded the attached Excel spreadsheet file" has to be wrong: The e-mail message would have already been received, in total, with the "attached" file so that the file did not need to be "downloaded". Of course, if the file was "downloaded" from just a URL in the e-mail message, then the file was not "attached" to the e-mail message. So, either the spreadsheet file was attached or downloaded but not both.

With irony, your:

"It was not some automatic process put into motion by the mere fact that someone emailed him, as you suggest in your rant."

gets at the main bad point in the article: The author is interested in drama, just drama, to grab readers by the gut, and in the special case of drama as some threat from some inexplicable, unfathomable, hidden evil forces of darkness. In particular the article did NOT include your "opened" the file and, instead, just had its:

"unwittingly set in motion a chain of events allowing hackers to raid ..."

So the threat was not from your "opened" but from its "unwittingly", that is, synonymous with my "inexplicable, unfathomable, hidden" and, with irony, also with your "some automatic process ...". The author IS claiming that the 'infection' was from some "automatic process" which, of course, is nonsense.

Again, the main claim early in the article is that any computer user is vulnerable to a massively destructive infection and security breach MERELY, "unwittingly", from an "automatic process", of receiving a bad e-mail and then downloading an attachment. This claim is nonsense, total 100% fuming, flaming, reeking nonsense. It's wrong, and from an effort to create confusion to scare people.

For your

"Second, I suggest you take a moment to reconsider your position that 'a virus, a root-kit, a Trojan, malicious, malevolent, nasty, etc., but STILL is just 100% harmless, safe, and innocuous' unless the computer is being operated by an idiot."

No, my statement is correct, a nice contribution, and fully appropriate for the subject of computer security for users of e-mail and personal computers.

To repeat, the key point for the target audience is not some "unwittingly" but just what I wrote:

Never, ever permit data from an untrusted
source to execute as software.

That's the key rule that everyone using a personal computer today needs to commit to memory, tattoo on the back of their right hand if necessary, pray to God each day at bedtime if necessary, and follow in all computer usage without exception.

The rule is simple and plenty within the ability of nearly any computer user.

And the rule insists that computer users know the difference between data just sitting in a file and data permitted to execute as software; this difference is just crucial.

Of course, the article, out of convenient ignorance or deliberate confusion or both, wanted to avoid mentioning your "opened", to avoid saying that the problem was not receiving the e-mail with an attachment, was not downloading a spreadsheet file, but WAS 'opening', and thus executing as software, data from an untrusted source.

The poor computer user was fine, safe, secure, etc. up to the moment they 'opened' the file. Again, the problem was 'opening' the file and not just receiving or downloading, unwittingly or not, the file.

"That is, unless you have never, on any occasion, been a victim of malware yourself."

The usual approach of the losing side of an argument is to attack the other person, not the other ideas. So, you are now after me, personally. I'm not the subject here; the article and computer security are the subject.

I've never gotten an infected computer via e-mail. With any decent e-mail software used in any decent way, it's essentially impossible for anyone to get an infected computer via e-mail. Again, as I explained, all standard SMTP and POP 3 e-mail is is just some lines of text of 8 bit bytes. This data is super simple to handle safely. To get an infection from such data, have to work at it. I made this point clear; it's good news; apparently you missed it.