COMPUTER viruses have been causing major problems for business and home users in West Devon in recent weeks, with a new one labelled the fastest and potentially most dangerous yet.

Local charity WestDEN was one of those to be affected by the virus. Caroline Rae, of West DEN, said that although they updated their anti-virus software regularly, it was not picked up, but once detected the virus was quickly cleaned.

Jim Griffiths, from Tavy Typesetting in Tavistock, said: 'The best protection is never to open an attachment unless you know what it is — especially if it is an .exe file,' he said.

'If you get a virus, contact the person it came from to stop them sending it out, then cure it using anti-virus software and the latest patches from the Internet.

'If you want to open an attachment, drag it to a quarantine folder and run a virus checker on it first,' he said, stressing the importance of regularly updating anti-virus software.

Alison Fife from Tavistock computer company Qwerty said they had been contacted by quite a few businesses and individuals affected, some quite badly and some who had only just purchased computers.

'Once you only stood a small chance of getting a virus and they spread slowly, but now they are getting out so quickly they are beating the anti-virus updates,' she said.

Although most people are cautious about opening attachments from people they do not know, these viruses catch the unsuspecting as they will come from friends or business contacts who are known.