The trojan, known as Hatoy or Qhosts, changes the settings of your computer to force you to view a website selected by the virus author.

It can't spread by itself and only infects a computer when you visit web pages that have been especially created to exploit a vulnerability with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.

Anti-virus companies believe that the address of the website is distributed via spam messages.

According to security expert Panda Software, the trojan has infected a number of computers in a short amount of time and advises you to treat all emails received with caution and to update your antiivirus software immediately.

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