Last Saturday was the initiation rites of our computer society.  Unlike some of the full pledge members, however, I did not have the good fortune of being able to bring my significant other to Mactan Island, Cebu.  My friend and I, who shared the same plight, found ourselves discussing some rather intrepid details of our love life.  In between sips of coffee in the pleasant ambience of the sea, our topic drifted from technology and into our personal sides in which only friends are allowed to venture.  I said to him, in jest, that our little tête-à-tête would have been perfect had it been that he was born as a she.

       "If only she was here," I said with a sigh.  "This moment could have been very romantic."

        "Are you gay or something?  Stop imagining I'm your girlfriend," he said while laughing.

       "Amaw," I replied.  "It's your turn to tell me about your love life."

       "Love life?  What love life," he said to me with a somewhat serious look.  "Pirme ko naunahan, pare."

       He was always beaten ahead by his rivals, he told me, so he would often scheme some devious plan just to get even.  Although I knew that my bespectacled friend is often at odds with people who find intelligence intimidating, I never knew I would find his dark side rather disturbing.  I was a bit shocked when he told me that after his unsuccessful courtships, he would use technology to exact vengeance on his rivals.  He was still immature then, he confessed, and he did not yet think of the serious consequences that would result in his irresponsible actions.

       "Remember on April 1," he told me nonchalantly, "when you received a message from SMART saying, 'You have transferred P1, 350.00 to +639191234560.  Trace #12345678.  Thank you for using SMART Pasa Load'?"

       "Well," he continued, "I forged something similar to it, only much sinister."

       "I assume you did your homework," I replied, "because the last time you did a prank on me, you forgot that I used Touch Mobile."

       "They were my classmates.  I knew all about them."

       A brief silence ensued, before our conversation turned serious.

       "I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway."

       I was not really in the mood for a serious conversation at that time, but something told me that I should listen.  I was mortified when he told me how, using technology I have grown to love, he carried out his revenge on his clueless rivals.  Using knowledge of the private details of their lives, he told me how he calculated his attacks to coincide at the times they are most vulnerable.  Because his classmates were not as technically inclined as him, he was able to use subtle deceptions to sow discord among the objects of his jealousy.  First, he used e-mail.  Since our current e-mail protocol does not require the recipient to authenticate the sender, it was very easy for him to make his e-mails appear as if it came from other people.  For those of us who have been a Netizen for quite some time now, we are probably familiar with this in the form of spam and Trojan e-mails that flood our inboxes daily.

       He also used SMS messaging.  With Bigfoot SMS, The Bat, Chikka, and other freely available softwares in the Internet, it has become easy for ordinary users to make it appear as if your text messages came from other people--even from the network operator itself.  This was the reason why I was pleasantly surprised to receive a prank message from my friend on April 1, because it is even possible to put alphanumeric characters in the sender field.  I also made a prank on others this way, except that the messages inherited its author's cuteness.  One of my messages was, "You have received 300 hugs and kisses from +639169367050.  Your credit will expire as soon as you don't give hugs and kisses in return.  Trace #12345678.  Thank you for using SMART Pasa Load."

       If only he used those technologies this way, perhaps he would not have earned his karmic consequences of guilt and regret.  My friend's case was clearly a case of knowledge misused, of using it in tandem with social engineering to gratify one's selfish ends.  If only he had fought his battles not as a guerilla but as a valiant knight, he would have probably won her woman's heart.  I wanted to change him, but I knew it was foolish to do so.  All I can do is to lead by example, but I am not sure if it is an example worth following.

       "Don't you know that what you did was wrong," I told my friend.

       "I know, Mon," he said to me while munching his biscuit.  "I know."

       It was already around 3:00 AM, and both of us were already feeling sleepy.

       "Hey look," I pointed my finger in the Southern skies.*  "There's a shooting star darting its way to the West.  I told you, this moment could have been very romantic."

       "Amaw na sad ay," he replied.  §

*I'm confused... When I viewed the place on NASAS's World Wind, it seems that I had pointed West.  I happened to bring a compass at that time, but the needle pointed South.  My sense of direction tells me, however, it was Northwest-- but who cares? :) [added on May 31, 2005]