A GLASGOW charity says it's been wrongly blamed for a computer virus which has crippled more than 1000 e-mail accounts.

People affected have been returning to work after the festive period to find their inboxes clogged up with hundreds of spam' messages.

The identical e-mails - with subject line Happy Holidays!' - appear to come from Roshni, an ethnic minority children's charity based on Glasgow's South Side.

Office manager Maureen Honan sent out the original message on Friday, December 22.

It was intended as a Christmas greeting to almost 1000 people on Roshni's newsletter mailing list.

Many who received it were staff at major West of Scotland organisations such as councils, the NHS, banks and universities.

But the e-mail was hijacked by a virus-infected computer and the offending machine spent the whole of the festive period sending multiple copies of the e-mail to every address it could find - including the 952 people on the mailing list.

Some staff have found more than 1000 copies of the message.

And the problem is still continuing today, because people replying to the e-mail are unwittingly fuelling the virus.

Many people's e-mail accounts have been frozen by IT staff because they are over their size limit, and employees have had to spend hours deleting messages manually.

Scores of irate workers have called Roshni to complain - and charity bosses fear a backlash.

Roshni spokesman Yusuf Chauhdry said: "We're afraid people will ask us to stop sending them information and unsubscribe from our newsletter.

"The virus e-mail looks like it's coming from our address, but it isn't. We're sorry this has happened."

However, computer experts said today that Roshni had left people on the mailing list vulnerable to attack because of the way it sent out the e-mail.

A spokesman for internet firm SurfControl, which provides spam filtering services to major organisations, said: "This is a classic example of an e-mail worm', which hijacks a computer.

"It was made very easy for the worm, because the sender in this case included a list of almost 1000 addresses." How to protect your computer Ensure your machine has a password to unlock the screen. Take care when downloading and installing software. Read the terms and conditions' before downloading software. Always make sure you have a current back-up of all your files before downloading anything new, and ensure your anti-virus software is up to date. Online intruders can steal your hard drive space, internet connection and bank details. Always have anti-virus software installed and take care when reading e-mail attachments. Use a firewall program, which limits the internet sites your computer can access. Install a tool to monitor your computer use - your CPU activity'. If someone is interfering with your PC it will show up. Update your software as often as possible and delete old and unwanted software.