It may be the oldest three-word ploy in the English language: "I love you." Yet when the message headlined a rampaging e-mail virus last week, dubbed the "Love Bug," hundreds of thousands of Internet users who should knowbetter fell fast and hard. Illinois journalist Jerry Landay thought his well-placed government source was writing to congratulate him on a recent story. Mike Lan-non, CEO of the Web start-up Send.com, believed he was receiving a joke from one of his venture capitalists. And an executive assistant in Dallas, who was so humiliated that she asked that her name not be used, suspected a dangerous e-mail prank but was overcome by the possibility of a potential crush. The result: a thousand more e-mails masquerading as love letters, with her name on it, sent to all her company's business contacts. "I don't like to be associated with those words," she shudders. "I'mnotBarry White."
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