“Our reports are showing that few of the people who saw the e-mail message in their inbox remembered who Joyce DeWitt was,” says Mark Schenkman, an Internet security expert in Tallahassee, Fla. “Of those who did remember her, few wanted to see sexy hot pictures of her.”
DeWitt, who appeared on the popular “Three’s Company” series from 1976 to 1984, played the role of Janet, the plain, man-hungry counterpart to Suzanne Somers’ blonde bombshell Chrissy. DeWitt was an unlikely choice to front a destructive e-mail virus, computer experts say.
“Whoever chose her screwed up big time,“Schenkman says. “I always had a thing for the blond one, though. She was way hotter.”
The so-called “Joyce DeWitt virus” has been tracked to the Netherlands, where it proved to be the handiwork of an Internet saboteur named Bugboy. “I sent this e-mail to prove a point,” Bugboy said late Tuesday night from his home in Rotterdam. “And that point is, that Janet was every bit as hot and sexy as Chrissy was.”
A police search of Bugboy’s apartment turned up a floppy disk containing another virus featuring the subject line, “Check out Mrs. Roper!!!” Law-enforcement officials in Holland said that Bugboy was now receiving psychiatric care.
