From time to time there are hoax virus threats. Although they impose no real threat they can cause problems especially in spreading panic amongst users and to waste time.

Quite often the emails will include a subject such as "*** THIS IS NO JOKE - PAY ATTENTION: ***" or something similar.

The main problem is that not only do usually find everyone forwards the hoax email virus warning on to everyone they know which in turn then spreads the "panic" and especially in organizations that have a network if computers can put strain on the email server.

Another problem with hoax email viruses is that some contain a "fix" for users such as deleting a specific file from the computer. For the majority of users this file will mean nothing and they will not know what it is so they may go and delete it. The problem with this is that the file that they are deleting is most likely not a virus and is a genuine file that is used with the computer to help it run.

Whenever you receive an email detailing about a virus it is worth doing a search on the leading anti virus software manufactures to see what they report as they will quite often carry a warning when a new virus has been released or do a search on the news sites such as BBC News or Google News to see if they are reporting of any new computer viruses!

Symantic have a list of some hoax viruses