Anti-virus companies are advising that everyone scan their machines before February 3, when the destructive virus known as Nyxem will delete a multitude of filetypes.
The virus has picked up a few names along the way, and is also known as:
Blackmal, MyWife, Kama Sutra, Grew and CME-24. Spread by email attachments promising pornographic material, the virus will wait till the 3rd of each month to wreak its havoc.
Once a machine is infected the virus searches email address books for targets, and even other PCs on the local area network.
Files will be deleted if they are of the following types:
DMP, DOC, XLS, MDB, MDE, PDF, PPS, PPT, PSD, RAR and ZIP.
There are plenty of anti-virus solutions that won"t cost you a penny, two of which are Grisoft"s AVG and AntiVir.