Look out! Your mp3 files are being deleted

NME reports a worrying development in the world of malicious computer software, a virus that will eat your music files:

The worm - called W32. Deletemusic - goes through an infected user's hard drive deleting all the MP3s it finds.

It also looks for any MP3s on any external drives and memory cards attached to the machine.

The memory card can then spread the worm to any other computer it is put into.

Frightening stuff. After all, you haven't gone to all that trouble pinching music off the peer-to-peer networks ("ripping your CDs to your hard-drive") in order to have your efforts wiped out, have you?

Only thing is, this virus isn't really any different to the thousands of others out in the wild - so, providing your virus protection is up to date, you should be fine. Also, amongst all the panic, NME fails to mention the somewhat less-frightening aspects of the virus which the Register covered when it reported the virus over a week ago:

The worm is spreading, albeit modestly, causing a small number of infections. Anti-virus vendors such as Symantec rate it as a low to no-risk threat.

Malware capable of zapping MP3 files is rare but far from unprecedented. The Klez-F worm, for example, which was widespread in 2002, overwrote MP3 files (and other file types) on certain days of the month. The Scrambler worm was programmed to scramble MP3 files to sound like a scratched record while the Mylife-G worm overwrote MP3 files with the words "my lIfE".