Melissa was responsible for the shut down of countless Internet mail systems that became clogged with infected emails that served to propagate the worm. The original intent of the Melissa Virus was not to necessarily cause any harm, but to see if it would actually work. However, the way in which it spread and overflowed servers proved to be disastrous. Although it's very difficult to determine for certain, several estimates have been made to assess the total amount of damage caused by the Melissa Virus and its subsequent spread. Most estimates have been between $95 and $395 million.

First distributed in the Usenet discussion group "alt. sex", Melissa was inside a seemingly harmless file called "List.DOC", a document containing passwords to eighty different pornographic websites. The list was widely circulated in emails almost immediately, usually appearing to be from someone the recipient knew, with the subject line '"Here is that document you asked for ... don't show it to anyone else ;-)'. If the recipient opened the attached document, the virus would then dig into their address book and forward the same message to the first 50 people on the list.

The author of Melissa, David L. Smith of New Jersey, claimed he named the virus after a stripper that he met in Florida. He referred to himself as Kwyjibo, but later was discovered to also be the person behind the aliasā VicodinES and Alt-F11, two online entities he used to release other similar and powerful viruses. After being convicted of interrupting and conspiracy to interrupt public communication, Smith was sentenced to 20 months in prison and received a fine of $5,000.

Shortly after the breakout of the Melissa Virus, in May of 2000, the ILOVEYOU worm began to spread. Like the Melissa Virus, it exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Outlook to mass mail itself. Unlike the Melissa Virus, the ILOVEYOU worm sent itself to everyone in the victim's mailbox (Melissa sent itself only to the first 50 on the list). The ILOVEYOU worm surpassed Melissa in its scope of destruction, causing an estimated $700 million worth of damage.

Microsoft Word 97 and Word 2000 were particularly vulnerable to the Melissa virus. Also, Microsoft Outlook 97 and 98 both served as ideal hosts to allow the macro virus to mass mail itself. The virus would not (and will not) work on any other versions of Microsoft Word, as well as any other versions of Outlook (including Outlook Express).

This sort of attack is known as a "consumer" attack, as it is a digital attack against consumers. The impact of the Melissa Virus was considered to be fairly mild, but it raised several red flags as to just how vulnerable personal computers are and what sorts of attacks they may potentially be vulnerable to in the future.

While the public is now much more aware of viruses and generally less inclined to open strange email attachments, there are still thousands of people who make the mistake of downloading viruses every year. Although antivirus programs are constantly developing and have become much more sophisticated over the years, so have the viruses. That is why it's important to have an up to date antivirus program on your computer that is regularly updated with the latest security threats so it can deal with them accordingly, should they be discovered.