“What do you mean youre frightened of catching something from your computer? Theyre not like public lavatories, you know.”
“Yes, but a bloke
in the pub told me that even putting that crisp medicated toilet paper
all around the seat wont stop really vicious bugs getting you,
and another bloke said that these computer viruses are even worse than
that. Isnt there some sort of rubber barrier you can put over
your keyboard to stop then getting
out?”
It sounds a bit far
fetched, but curiously there is a case of outbreak of syphilis
contracted on line. Well almost, anyway. Three years ago health
officials in San Francisco were trying to deal with a sudden upsurge in
cases of syphilis and eventually tracked the source to an internet chat
room.
Investigators from the San
Francisco Department of Health, who interviewed seven men infected with
syphilis, were intrigued to find that all of them had found their most
recent partners through a chat room on AOL (America On
Line).
The chat room SFM4M—San
Francisco Men for Men—was a contact place for gay men, one of
whom had syphilis. Doing something about the problem became a major
challenge for the authorities when AOL refused to reveal the identities
of its chat room regulars, users who invariably, and unsurprisingly,
used online nicknames.
In the face
of AOLs unwillingness to cooperate, the authorities took their
problem to the online gay and lesbian community, PlanetOut, which was
instrumental in helping track down potentially infected chat room
regulars.
