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Hopefully, you now can see the problem - you are involved in an attack on the internet itself. As this huge number of emails hits mail servers worldwide, a backlog is inevitable. As a consequence, many people suffer because of the ignorance - harsh but apt - of a few blindly following the instructions sent in an email. You have unwittingly been accessory to the malicious designs of a minority set of internet users who find it amusing to wreak havoc and try to bring major companies to their knees. Far be from us to pass judgement but it is selfish.

Virus Alerts are not the only hoax that take this form - you may also have seen pleas for help on behalf of the terminally ill or good-luck/feel-good messages of one kind or another - but all fall foul of at least one of those points. To date, the best sources of hoax information that we've found are these:

• Sophos - Anti Virus Software company - see Note
• McAfee - Anti Virus Software company - see Note
• Snopes - Independent Hoax and Urban Legend site that rates recently circulated material as True, False or Unsubstantiated
• VMyths - Independent Hoax and Urban Legend site that chases down the facts and origins of your email
• IT Safe - A UK government site that highlights real issues and you can sign up to a free newsletter

Note: Anti Virus Software companies make money by supplying a product that protects you. Although you paid for the software, the updates are free - and so they should be! They can't possibly provide a product at a reasonable cost if they ship updates for every hoax circulated and it is therefore in their best interest to expose these for what they are on their web site. Their developers are then free to research inoculations against the new virus and variant strains that come to light every day.

Hopefully, you now possess a little knowledge and leave this page a little wiser about the true nature of chain emails - be they virus alerts, pleas for help or feel-good wishes - and you won't be quite so eager to circulate them to everyone whose email address you've stored without first checking the above sites. If at least two of them list your email as a hoax, the best place for it is the bin together with an email to the person who sent it to you giving them the address of this page.

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