The perpetrator of what's now being called the "Love Bug" virus, certainly knew what he or she was doing by placing the words "ILOVEYOU" in the message field of the email trigger.

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, writing about the plague the day after it hit, said he'd learned long ago to apply "a modern version of my late, sainted mother's advice"; he never opens email attachments from strangers.

Of course, the "Love bug" went a sinister step farther. By worming its way into a victim's electronic address book, it delivered the message to lots of people who thought it was coming from a friend.

I would have been victimized by the bug had not my alert friend immediately followed his launching of the chain with a message warning all his recipients of the virus. I'll wonder for a long time whether I would have opened the ILOVEYOU attachment had I not received the almost immediate follow-up warning.

I've been pretty good at following the same line that Page's mother pressed upon him -- never open attachments from strangers -- but this was disguised as a friend and had a seeming charming message.

But as Page points out, the truly diabolical nature of this little virus is that its perpetrator touched on our human need for love by making his or her little email powder keg appear to be a romantic or affectionate gambit.

There was no sales pitch, no sophomoric sleaze and tease, no promise of riches or Internet secrets. This little message promised uplifting love.

But wait, isn't that promise via email in itself a bit hard to swallow?

It's bad enough that journalists tend to be cynical about love. There's a tendency to disparage even the slightest hint of a love story getting into the news. Now the love bug villain has given love a bad name on the Internet.

But I have to wonder why we think an electronic medium is capable of providing love? It's in line with the weird stories of Internet sex. Isn't Internet sex an oxymoron if not an outright ludicrous impossibility? Of course, I know that Internet sex typically refers to seduction leading to a live rendezvous, but I can't help wonder how shallow our conception of love has become if we think it can be delivered by email.

Ever since the phone company convinced us that telephoning was "the next best thing to being there," we've been seduced into thinking something like love goes on through the wires. It ain't so.

Just when I'm thinking people can't be so gullible as to think that true love can be delivered in bits and bytes, along comes Bill Gates.

Writing in Time magazine this week, Gates argues that viruses such as the love-bug will be much more difficult to guard against if Microsoft is broken up. Gates' logic is that the Justice Department, by breaking up the giant software company, would have the effect of curtailing software innovations.

Don't look now, Webheads and e-mailers (and Time readers), but Mr. Gates is making an appeal for your love. Gates wants us to love Microsoft just as it is. Why do I have the sense an attempt is being made to seduce me into Microsoft's cozy bed?

The AP reported that victims of the love-bug virus have been replying to the email perpetrator with hordes of messages both cursing and praising the virus.

There's an echo of Microsoft in this response, isn't there? One either loves it or hates it. And most of this emotion is passed along via email. There was a time that Gates was unavailable to the press. Then someone broke through and got an interview with him -- via email. To a large degree, we've all been seduced to email by Microsoft.

Meanwhile, investigators are focussing their search for the love-bug perpetrator on the Philippines; although one Swedish researcher has laid the blame at the feet of a bored German student in Australia. This is beginning to sound like a real-time playing out of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Wasn't it about a month ago that the big telemarketing and Internet sales organizations revealed they were installing large banks of electronic machinery in places such as the Philippines because it was easier to hire telemarketers there? If I'm not mistaken, one of the companies involved was America Online.

Can we with any certainty assure ourselves that Microsoft is not behind the love bug? I'm usually not enamored with conspiracy theories, but it's just like Bill Gates to try and tell us somebody at the other end of an email message loves us.

Where is Page's sainted mother when we need her wisdom? Searching for love in the wrong places has got us searching for hate in the wrong places? It has Gates searching for defense in the wrong places.

And in the background I hear my friend who still refuses to sign up for an email account admonishing me: "Get a life."