Sophos senior technology consultant, Graham Cluley, has urged users who have received the email to delete it and tell their friends and family it is a fake alert. He also compared the email with the well known "Olympic Torch" virus hoax, which first circulated in 2006.

Cluley says: "This is not just something to smile and shrug your shoulders about. The problem with email jokes related to computer viruses is that some people don't see the funny side. Before you know it thousands of people are forwarding it to each other as a real security warning. It's not that it's just a waste of time and bandwidth but it also might result in users taking drastic actions to clean-up their computer from a virus infection which may never have ever existed."