Fake Elf News: The Goofy Game Everyone Thought Was Spyware
How Elf Bowling, the incredibly popular viral game from 1999, gained an unfounded, false reputation as a piece of malware and spyware.
A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.
I know this sounds pretty crazy and dangerous, but there was once a time when we sent one another executable files via email.
It was kinda like playing Russian Roulette with our operating systems, but we still did it. (No executables in this message. Promise.)
And one of these executable files that was distributed over this medium that’s infamously prone to security problems is basically a goofy holiday-themed game. You’ve probably played it a few times if you’re of a certain age.
It’s called Elf Bowling, and it was nothing more than a brilliant bit of viral marketing for a web design company. But weirdly enough, its story feels like it has a lot of parallels today — the accusations against it feel like a prime example of fake news.
Let’s discuss the email era’s greatest holiday-themed hoax.
