I’m not writing this to scare you, I’m writing this to warn you. I don’t know what the hell it is – a warning from God, a sign that technology is advancing too fast, a demented government test or whatever, I just don’t know. What I do know though, is that it’s frightening, and could come back at any time, so please read this and heed my warnings.
It was the winter of 1999 when the email first started arriving in recipients’ inboxes. The New Year was fast approaching, and there was a lot of talk about the ‘Millennium Bug’, (also referred to as the Year 2000 Problem, or Y2K for short.) which apparently had the potential to completely ‘wipe’ any computer, regardless of brand, origin and value. I just remember that it was around that particular time my interest in computing began; and only today it dawns on me the kind of impact such a ‘bug’ or ‘virus’ would have – businesses would be ruined, billions of dollars lost in an instant, relationships and lives changed forever, all because of a few line of codes which can manipulate your computer into practically killing itself. You hear of similar things today, ‘hackers’ who sit in their rooms all day, slaving obsessively until they manufacture the perfect method to spy, destroy or steal people’s private data. Of course, as with anything in life, people use such power for both good and bad. The interesting thing here is that, since the ‘Millennium Bug’, there has been no ‘worldwide’ threat to the computing world in terms of malicious malware – it was the first and last bug to gain an infamous and almost ‘celebrity like’ status. Everyone knew what it was and what it was supposed to do – but what no one really knew was where it came from. Since 2000, a huge augmentation in anti-virus and computer protection software took off, and that was pretty much the end of the perceived threat of ‘computer crime’. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and viruses exist today, but they present nothing like the threat of the ‘Y2K’.
At the time of all the speculation about this new ‘mega-threat’ to computers, a peculiar email was being sent to hundreds of internet users worldwide. The email would have the subject ‘1999’, with the sender simply being listed as ‘1999’ as well. It just looked like another junk email, similar to those received from desperate con artists and deceitful frauds, but this one seemed very different. Upon opening the email, the text would be what appeared as a string of random numbers and letters which made no sense at all. If that wasn’t odd enough, the ‘date received’ section of the email would be set as ‘12/12/2000’, which at the time of anyone receiving the email would be considered as ‘in the future’. Pretty much everyone just ignored it and considered it spam, naturally. However, once they deleted it, the email would soon reappear – the more frequently deleted, the more frequently it would come back, almost as if it was begging and pleading to be read. Some people went as far as to block the sender, but to no avail. Some people replied to the email, but received nothing back. Some even chose to make new email accounts but not even that could stop them from receiving it.
The email was getting so frustrating for some people, having it in their inbox every single day, that they actually sat down and studied every single number and letter methodically, almost religiously. Tirelessly, people were trying to crack the code, or whatever the hell it was. It had no meaning, no purpose, but people could not detach themselves from try to figure something out. Unfortunately, everyone who attempted to find sense in the email failed. No one who started, ever really stopped though – almost every spare moment they had was dedicated to the email and trying to find out what it meant.
It wasn’t long before people started putting two and two together; claiming that the email was in fact a tie in with the ‘Y2K’ virus, and people who had opened the email may be at risk to computer problems. Suddenly, on December 15th 1999, the email had stopped being sent to people. When the email was deleted, it finally stayed that way without ever being resent again. People simply forgot about it, and went on with their business as usual – except for some.
December 12th 2000 was when the disturbing reports began to surface. Extreme ‘changes’ in the people who had been subjected to the email were being noticed by friends and family – inaudible but constant mumbling during their sleep, eye site issues, (particularly when using a computer monitor/television screen.) and sometimes severe, uncontrollable body spasms. After a short amount of time, the said symptoms would develop into one of three categories: severe bouts of manic depression, uncontrollable fits of rage or simply complete mental dementia – it was during this second stage that the bizarre suicides and brutal murders took place. Thousands of people were either killing themselves or other people with absolutely no known or even fathomable benefactors – the fact that there were simply no explanations for most of the events was haunting enough for most people, never mind the fashion in which these events actually took place. Perfectly happy, innocent and normal people were doing unexplainable and disturbing things.
Of course, the governmental bodies of each nation involved were swift in identifying a correlation between the bizarre email and the fatalities – each of them knew about the mysterious email which had previously been sent around, and copies had been kept in government documents incase any relation between the email and the ‘Y2K’ bug could be found, possibly leading to who was responsible for the furor. They were quick to filter out any media interest in the accounts relating to the flux of murders and suicides to prevent mass panic. The thing is though, as you probably could have guessed, a simple string of text that can turn people completely insane would be found as highly ‘valuable’ by leaders around the world, and could be used and manipulated into a deadly weapon to use against enemies and opposition; hence why each leading body dedicated hundreds of man hours to researching and finding out anything they could about the email. The sender could never be traced – the IP track would simply come back as ‘128.0.0.1’, which, in essence, would mean the receiver sent the email, which was clearly impossible. No trace could be found in relation to the sender of the email, or where it came from.
Back before the new millennium, people were no where as well informed about ‘spam’ emails as they are today – some genuinely, and innocently, fell for their sly tricks. The methods to creating ‘spam’ used to be very different too: usually, when someone would create an application to send out the emails, there was a crucial rule to follow: you add a ‘Syncrux Tracker’, (Syn track, or just Syn for short.) somewhere in the email, which was essentially an invisible string of code that could gather data from the receivers inbox, such as amount of mail in the inbox, how long the emails have been in the inbox, last time the user logged into their inbox etc. This would usually be done so the sender of the ‘spam’ email could practically ‘measure’ the susceptibility of the recipient, and whether to bother sending them such emails again’. ‘Syncrux Trackers’ exist today, but in various different forms; usually well disguised or undetectable ‘javascripts’ or ‘php elements’ which can track your mouse movement, track the typing on your keyboard, move your folders around, delete files etc. With the ‘1999’ email, a Syn Tracker was found, but without the usual collection of data – instead, the Tracker would in fact play an embedded audio file. The audio could not be heard by the naked human hear, (similarly to that of a dog whistle) but when recorded and viewed in wave-lengths, the sound was classed as ‘long, drawn out drones of white noise' in the official investigation documents.
Then, that was it.
Nothing else was ever found out about what happened, where the email originated or who created it. The investigation was put on indefinite hold by all bodies involved in investigations, claiming that they simply did not have the means, time or men to research further into the incident. All the people who were part of investigation teams related to the incident were all placed on a scheme similar to that of the witness protection program. Anyone related to governmental bodies in any way will deny any of this ever happened. People still debate about how the email came about and whether it even existed on various sites on the internet (Google: ‘Y2K epidemic’), but I believe it really did exist. News reports on the ‘Y2K’ bug itself are easy to find online, but there are very few on actual murders or suicides linked to the bug, or emails for that matter. I’ve gathered everything I have told you here from previous accounts people have given me on the internet and a couple from conversations in person. Not too many people will remember much about it, but ask around and you may find something else out that would be worth adding to this document – if people tell you they don’t want to talk about it though, then don’t force them; this was extremely traumatic for anyone involved in the incident.
Why did I compile this? To make people aware of what happened, so people can know the truth, even if others don’t want you to. I’ve also read that a lot of people think an email similar to this one will resurface again sometime soon, but for more on that check the links at the bottom of this post. Or maybe even if you get that email yourself, from ‘1999’, subject: ‘1999’. So I can warn you - never, ever open it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2000_problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
