The road to Wellman, Iowa, features a strange set of hazards. For starters, you have to watch for horse-drawn vehicles. The signs along the way announce routes to the local churches -- Methodist mostly, with a few Mennonite congregations. The parking lot at the local grocery store has hitching posts so the Mennonites can tie up their teams while they shop. Without question, this is a tough place to get a T1 line.

Of course, there's only one guy in town who's driven enough to want one. Rob Rosenberger, known in the computer security world as the scourge of the antivirus companies, recently settled in downtown Wellman and established offices for the Computer Virus Myths Home Page. The site is a for-profit business administered by ScreenSaver.com but controlled by Mr. Rosenberger. Traffic on the Computer Virus Myths Web site is modest but respectable -- about 136,000 visitors per month -- and it always spikes during a crisis. The site receives a great deal of traffic from employees of Microsoft and government agencies.

Mr. Rosenberger moved to Wellman from St. Louis at the behest of his wife, Denise, who had taken a job in the area as a government programmer. Mrs. Rosenberger is a retired Air Force sergeant who shares her husband's passion for countering the hype spread by antivirus companies. "I could speak eloquently, or I could say it just pisses me off," she says. "I don't approve of companies making money on fear."

The couple's strange pastime originated in 1988, when Mr. Rosenberger was still a programmer for the United States Air Force. He challenged the dire virus warnings issued by John McAfee, founder of the antivirus software company McAfee, through an FAQ called the "Computer Virus Myths Treatise," which was spread widely across bulletin board services and the Genie and CompuServe networks. The treatise "swept the planet in two weeks," he says.

In the last 12 years, as he has stepped up his efforts, Mr. Rosenberger has become one of the most visible and cursed critics in computer security. Like the virus writers who keep the security companies in business, he revels in taking on powerful targets. He routinely takes shots at the press (reporters, when they figure into his columns, generally "declare" or "blab"), opens fire on the government (full of "media hounds" who "moan the obligatory 'wake -- up call'") and delights in pointing out the year 2000 problems of Network Associates.

The tone of his reportage is as scathing as it is hilarious. In a description of the publicity around a recent virus, he wrote that "the newly discovered ьber-virus contains 'pornographic material' of two pandas in the throes of passion." He mocked a press release that called the virus "damaging" and "offensive."

"Offensive?" he wrote. "Pandas mate five days a week on the Discovery channel, you know." He further suggested that the mother of the author of the press release "shouldn't take him to the zoo; the gazelles might give him an eyeful." His mission, he says, is to set the record straight in a world where hysteria sells. "It's not a labor of love," he explains. "Let's call it a labor of anger."

Most of Mr. Rosenberger's official career was spent as a programmer for the Air Force, starting in 1982; he also spent time in NATO intelligence. A mysterious wooden plaque on a wall of his office addresses him as "crew chief, First Information Warfare Division, 609th Information Warfare Squadron." The plaque, however, is one of the few things Mr. Rosenberger declines to discuss.

The heads of antivirus companies like Network Associates and Symantec know the name Rosenberger all too well. "I think Rob is an interesting cross between Ralph Nader and Steve Forbes," says Gene Hodges, president of McAfee, now owned by Network Associates. Why Steve Forbes? "I think Rob understands capitalism, even though he doesn't directly participate," he answers.

Mr. Rosenberger says he realized his work had had an effect when he visited the software developer Symantec in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago. As he tells it, when he met Enrique Salem, the company's chief technical officer, Mr. Salem told him, "You know, you directly affect our stock price."

Although Mr. Salem doesn't recall having made the remark, he acknowledges that Mr. Rosenberger is an influential voice. "There's a set of antivirus people that pay attention to what he writes," says Mr. Salem, who is now senior vice president of engineering for Ask Jeeves, the search engine developer. As for the assertion that the antivirus companies sell products through fear, he counters that "the reality was, sure, we had great marketing, but we have a great product too."

These days, Mr. Rosenberger is busy settling into Wellman. He has joined the local Rotary Club and continues to negotiate for a high -- bandwidth pipeline with the local telephone coцperative, an outfit he refers to as "Randy, Jane, and Joe, Incorporated."

Here in the land where big American cars rule the road and Wellman's Little Sweetheart Contest dominates the calendar, Mr. Rosenberger plans to continue his mission full-time. No doubt the antivirus companies will keep an eye on him. To paraphrase Mr. Hodges of McAfee: Rob's a character, but God save us from boredom.

Write to rfr@ix.netcom.com.