A spam email with a virus in an attachment was sent out yesterday, claiming to come from ARLA.

Anyone who received it should – if it is not too late – ignore it and bin it.

Anyone who may have opened the attachment by mistake should update their antivirus and run a full antiviruscam.

The email, headed Important Announcement, asked recipients to download the attached document, sign it and return it as soon as possible.

Many spam filters will have removed the virus and/or blocked the email. Where it got through, Microsoft Office would not open the document properly and prompted the recipient it might be dangerous.

The spam email gets round this by saying: “Please if your browser isn’t viewing the document kindly enable content to view.”

The email was apparently signed by David Cox, who  yesterday said he cannot be certain that it went out only to ARLA members. All members of NFoPP were warned about the hoax.

Cox himself was alerted to it by a number of members.