The first computer virus in the Philippines is known as the "ILOVEYOU" virus, also referred to as the "Love Bug" or "Loveletter" virus. It emerged on May 4, 2000, and quickly spread globally, affecting millions of computer systems worldwide. The virus was sent as an attachment in an email with the word "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. When opened, the attachment caused the virus to spread quickly within a company because Microsoft Outlook was frequently set up as the default email management tool on business networks around the world. The ILOVEYOU virus is actually a worm, not a virus, and it goes by the names "love letter virus" and "love bug worm". A worm is a type of malware that can duplicate itself and spread from system to system without human interaction or intervention, in contrast to a virus, which is malicious code that replicates after human intervention. The ILOVEYOU virus reportedly gained 45 million users in just around 10 days and cost the economy $10 billion in losses. The virus was designed by a Filipino computer programmer named Onel de Guzman, who incorporated the virus into the source code he submitted for his final thesis while studying as an undergraduate computer student at the AMA Computer College.