If there were not already enough to worry about, we now have cellphone viruses. A UK Web site has a story on a cellphone virus spread by the wireless Bluetooth protocol, which some newer phones have built in. Bluetooth is a short range wireless protocol intended to make it easier to sync cellphone data with your computer, among other uses.
The Cabir virus is harmless, and simply displays the word 'caribe' on your cellphone display. But it would be easy to design other virueses that wipe out contact information, change ring tones, and make other changes to the data stored on the phone.
Computer viruses remain a serious problem. The article notes that the Zafi-B worm is found in nearly 10% of all emails right now.
I think I'll keep my old, pre-Bluetooth phone a bit longer. Although it is two years old and has lately caused some twenty-somethings to wrinkle their noses in disgust when I pull it out, it works just fine, and is loaded with many useless functions that I have never had any use for. It's not clear to me why I need a new phone with more useless functions. My favorite useless function on my phone is the tip calculator; you type in the the amount of the bill and the percentage tip you want to give, and it figures it out for you. Strangely enough, I've always been able to do that kind of math in my head. If I really felt the need to apply technology to the task, I could also use the built in calculator, which will figure out tips with the same number of keystrokes as the tip calculator. What would we do without the IT industry?