Antivirus companies have warned of a mass mailing worm that is spreading through the wild by masquerading as a matchmaking program.

Matcher is a Windows worm constructed in Visual Basic. It arrives as an email with the subject line 'Matcher', and the body text reads: "Want to find your love mates!!! Try this its cool ... Looks and Attitude Maching [sic] to opposite sex." The mail also carries an attached executable file, matcher.exe.

UK-based antivirus company Sophos warned that should the file be opened, it will copy itself to the Windows System and Temp directories, then it will mail itself to every name in the user's Outlook address book.

The worm also makes changes to the existing Autoexec.bat file adding the lines:

@echo off
echo from: Bugger
pause

But Eugene Kaspersky, head of antivirus research for Kaspersky Lab, said: "This worm is not anything remarkable, and does not pose a threat to users by destroying or disclosing confidential information."

However, he added that "the fact that the virus is present in computers, means that unauthorised mass spreading could prove damaging to a company's or individual user's reputation".