Monday morning, Academic Information Technologies discovered a virus-laden e-mail message that looks like it was sent from ISU computer support had been making its way around the Internet.

Mike Bowman, assistant director for AIT, said the university’s anti-virus software has been updated.

It now catches the message, eliminating it from circulation on the ISU e-mail server.

The text of the e-mail says, “Dear user of iastate.edu: Your e-mail account has been used to send a huge amount of unsolicited e-mail messages during this week. Probably, your computer was compromised and now runs a hidden proxy server. Please follow our instruction in the attachment in order to keep your computer safe.”

Included with the message is a zip file attachment. Jeff Balvanz, systems analyst for AIT, advises e-mail users to not open this or any unexpected attachments, even if they are from someone they know. — Alicia Ebaugh