This week Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos antivirus, asks whether virus hype is congatious.

You have to keep things in proportion. Global events remind us that computer viruses, although a nuisance, are not and never were the end of the world.

In the past we have seen security experts, who should know better, warning of an avalanche of new viruses in the run-up to Y2K or the "internet rabies" that is Code Red. In light of the 11 September terrorist activity, some may have hoped that a better sense of proportion would be found as to the true nature of the threat. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case.

For the last two weeks, the papers and television news have been full of stories about the danger of an anthrax biological virus attack, and dozens of people have feared exposure to the threat. Public concern is naturally high - and we have seen many false alarms and panics concerning Anthrax even far from American shores.

How does this relate to computer viruses?

Well, on Wednesday an anti-virus vendor decided to issue a press release about a virus which would normally be deemed utterly insignificant, if not for the fact that it contains the words 'Anthrax Info' in its subject line.

Some elements of the media leapt on the story. Here was an internet version of the biological virus everyone was so worried about. Who cares that the virus only sent its message in Spanish and was unlikely to fool anyone in the English speaking world?

Whoops! The antivirus vendor forgot to mention that the virus doesn't actually work properly, and that because of a bug, it fails to spread and will never be encountered in the wild. But why should that get in the way of running a computer virus story on the back of alarm about biological attack?

So, all we have is a virus called VBS/VBSWG-2B (a rather unsexy name), that isn't very exciting and is unlikely to get media attention without a marketing department making a link with a biological virus that normally infects sheep. It doesn't actually work properly, and it has never spread in the wild.

Furthermore, most antivirus products were capable of detecting the virus months before it first came into existence. VBS/VBSWG-2B (I can't bring myself to call it by the "A" name) had been created using a version of the virus construction kit known as the Visual Basic Script Worm Generator - a different version of the same construction kit as used by Jan de Wit, author of the Anna Kournikova worm.

Because researchers have analysed the construction kit, customers of most antivirus products are automatically protected against viruses created using the kit, even before they have been analysed by their vendor.

It's a shame that on so many occasions, virus alerts are a case of more hype than genuine havoc. Antivirus companies should act responsibly when it comes to virus alerts. Too often they are found to be guilty of adding to the problem rather than assisting with it. In many cases it is not the virus that will spread - only confusion and panic amongst the general public.