23 years ago this month, the infamous Love Bug worm was released onto the Internet by a young man from Manila whose clickbait experiment infected 10 million computers and spread worldwide through the Windows Address Book. It led the Philippines to urgently adopt an anti-virus law just two months later.

Recently tracked down in his home town, he is now a modest mobile phone technician in a busy mall. “Sometimes I get my picture on the internet,” he says. “My friends said, ‘It’s you, it’s you!’ They find my name. I’m a shy person, I don’t want this.”