THE Love Bug computer virus is claiming scores of victims in York - including many small businesses and the local Tax Office.

Today systems staff are assessing the damage caused by the electronic love letter virus. Thousands of office workers around the world opened the apparently romantic message sent to them by e-mail, rapidly spreading the virus which contained a destructive computer programme designed to delete files on hard disks.

Information technology staff were today overhauling an internal system at York Inland Revenue office after the systems team had to shut it down fearing the bug had infiltrated it.

And software experts in York said they have been awash with calls appealing for help, having mistakenly opened the bogus e-mail. One firm - a professional services business at Clifton Moor - faces a week without e-mail communications after its system was corrupted.

A spokesman for the Tax Office assured the public there is no danger of files and records being affected by the virus - which paralysed computer networks around the world.

The affectionate message - telling recipients: "Kindly check the attached love letter from me!" - also quickly replicates itself by automatically sending copies to everybody listed in users' e-mail address books.

David McKenna, spokesman for Inland Revenue's York office, said: "We were affected yesterday afternoon and we closed down the affected system as soon as we found out.

"We must say that we only use the system to communicate to each other and there will be no adverse effects on the public's files."

But other organisations haven't been so lucky. Paul Blanchard, managing director of York's Software Results, explained: "Small business users and home users have been the ones badly affected. Many just don't have adequate virus protection. We received calls from 40 small businesses and personal PC-owners shortly after news of the bug hit. We're looking after a business in Clifton Moor, with 25 staff, because all its mail servers are down and they will lose a week of work done by e-mail.

"The cost of this is intangible. They could do a lot by phone but these days a lot of business is done electronically and you don't know what you might have missed."

The Love Bug is thought to have been launched from Manila yesterday and first emerged in Hong Kong before spreading to other parts of Asia and Europe. Computer experts were today grappling with Love Bug 2 - a new strain of the virus that yesterday paralysed networks across the globe. This time, the destructive bug disguises itself as an e-mail joke promising to be "very funny".