Cyber love bug has little impact on Jakarta's web

JAKARTA (JP): The ILOVEYOU computer virus, which caused computer havoc across much of the world on Friday, did not appear to do much damage here.

Few computer crashes were reported due to the virus.

Analysts said the impact of the virus was much smaller here than in other countries because the use of computer systems here was still low.

"It is not that we have a better protection system here, but mainly because our computer network and e-mail use here are not as widespread as overseas," Goenawan Loekito, marketing manager of Computer Associates, was quoted as saying by Astaga.com on Friday.

Goenawan said information on computer crashes as a result of the virus in the country was thus far not known.

However, he called on Internet users to remain cautious when operating their computers, especially when checking their e-mail, since large numbers of files containing the ILOVEYOU virus might have been sent to computer users in the country.

He said the ILOVEYOU virus would mainly affect users of e-mail services, especially free web-based ones.

There are currently over one million Internet users in Indonesia, including nearly 500,000 subscribers, according to Sanjaya, the secretary-general of the Indonesian Association of Internet Service Providers (APJII).

Sanjaya said none of the country's 35 active Internet Service Providers (ISPs) had reported problems in their computer networks or systems due to the virus.

"It is possible that the virus has infected some of the ISPs' computers. But maybe the impact of the virus can still be managed by the ISPs," he said.

Two of the country's major ISPs, Indosat.net and Indo.net, said no traces of the virus had been found in any of their computers, and that their networks and systems were safe.

News portal Astaga.com also said its systems had not experienced any trouble so far.

But, news portal Detik.com said at least two of its computers broke down after users opened e-mails carrying ILOVEYOU attachments.

An official at Detik.com said the virus had ruined all the portal's photo files.

"But the portal's operations are not affected at all because the virus did not affect the other computers. Our computer network and system are all right," she said. (cst)