{"id":471482,"date":"2026-02-10T22:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471482\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T22:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T22:09:10","slug":"today-in-history-february-11-a-million-people-couldnt-resist-opening-this-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471482\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History &#8211; February 11: A million people couldn&#8217;t resist opening this email"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/facb8969-df03-466b-9d1e-8219210f8c6f.jpeg\"   alt=\"\"\/>Anna Kournikova was a Russian tennis player who at the time was one of the world&#8217;s most Googled women. (Wayne Taylor\/The Age)<\/p>\n<p>The email had the subject title: &#8220;Here you have, ;0)&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>When users opened what they thought was a photo, it instead infected their computer, then sent out the email to everyone in the victim&#8217;s inbox.<\/p>\n<p>Aside from embarrassing the user, the virus was entirely benign.<\/p>\n<p>But the curiosity of recipients to look at a photo of an athlete caused countless company email accounts to get clogged.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/579a22c9-0baf-44bc-bf83-c21c7bffbc83.jpeg\"   alt=\"Email users assumed they were being sent a photo of Anna Kournikova.\"\/>Email users assumed they were being sent a photo of Anna Kournikova. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n<p>In an anonymous blog post, De Wit defended his actions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never wanted to harm the people you (sic) opened the attachment,&#8221; he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But after all: it&#8217;s their own fault they got infected with the AnnaKournikova virus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The virus was enough of a problem for the FBI to turn to another notorious hacker to track down the culprit.<\/p>\n<p>David L Smith was already in custody over creating a similar virus, the so-called Melissa virus, two years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>An estimated one million email accounts were infected by the Melissa virus.<\/p>\n<p>Smith would help the FBI find De Wit.<\/p>\n<p>But the young Dutchman would surrender to police of his own accord in his hometown of Sneek.<\/p>\n<p>He faced a maximum of four years in prison and potentially tens of thousands in fines.<\/p>\n<p>But the court was not so harsh, sentencing him to 150 hours of community service.<\/p>\n<p>Within days of the virus being released, he was offered a job by the mayor of Sneek.<\/p>\n<p>Smith wasn&#8217;t so lucky, being sentenced to 20 months in prison the following year.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/816366b9-bb86-475b-92b3-96981435ca9f.jpeg\"   alt=\"Anna Kournikova's career peaked with the Australian Open in 2001.\"\/>Anna Kournikova&#8217;s career peaked with the Australian Open in 2001. (Nine Archives)At the time of the virus, Kournikova was at the height of her success, making the quarter finals of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.9news.com.au\/australian-open\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Australian Open\">Australian Open<\/a> just weeks earlier.<\/p>\n<p>\ufeffNEVER MISS A STORY: Get your breaking news and exclusive stories first by following us across all platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anna Kournikova was a Russian tennis player who at the time was one of the world&#8217;s most Googled&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-471482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}