Software and computing giant Microsoft has announced its intentions to launch legal assaults on any purveyors of "scareware", it has been reported.

It made its feelings known through a lawsuit against a man accused of bombarding computer users with a program called Registry Cleaner XP, which was said to tell people that their PC was corrupted or damaged and that they needed to buy the product for $40 (£22).

However, in reality, nothing was wrong with computer systems.

Teaming up with Washington State's Attorney General Rob McKenna, senior attorney for Microsoft's internet safety enforcement team Richard Boscovich announced the company's action against James Reed McCreary of Texas and his companies Branch Software and Alpha Red.

Mr Boscovich said: "We won't tolerate the use of alarmist warnings or deceptive 'free scans' to trick consumers into buying software to fix a problem that doesn't even exist."

It was announced this week by security company Webroot that US presidential campaign videos on peer-to-peer networks were spreading malware onto personal computers.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)