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The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) says it has received numerous reports of websites purporting to be owned by legitimate charities but which may download a virus onto vulnerable computers.

Other scams appear to be variants of the 419 emails that claim to have large inheritance funds to move to the western world, seeking a bank account to which they can be sent.

Another email scam purports to offer a service for finding loved ones that may have been caught up in the disaster - for a fee. And a further scam asks for donations to be sent to overseas bank accounts.

The NCIS warns not to respond to unsolicited emails, including opening attachments, and text messages and to be wary of anyone claiming to be a survivor or a foreign government official.

Paul Wood, principle information security analyst at MessageLabs said that the company had picked up a few instances of bogus emails in its honeypot network - which collects viruses and spam for analysis - but that they were quite obvious in nature.

'All the warning

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signs were there,' he said. 'They used the same structure, grammar and wording of a 419 scam.'

He said that the first reports came in at the beginning of the year but that the numbers remained low. 'We haven't yet seen a fully fledged phishing attack, although the potential for this sort of thing is there,' he said. 'I am surprised at this stage, it could have been much bigger. We've had no reports from our customers of being targeted. Perhaps the scammers thought it was a step too far, but whether or not it's a case of honour amongst thieves, I don't know.'

Certainly charities have been used in scams in the past. 'We've seen charities used as mules in this way before,' he said. At the end of last year there was a spate of emails sent round with the offer of working from home transferring money abroad to a 'charity'. Only last week authorities in Australia arrested four teenagers transferring money from hacked bank accounts to Russia. And earlier last year another email scam claimed to be from a Russian orphan foundation asking for donations with a link to a spoof website.

The NCIS advises that if you are going to donate online, type the web address of the charity directly into your browser; don't follow a link from an email. Use recognised charities and use the Internet to verify the legitimacy of any organisations you are unsure of.

You can report suspicious email and websites to tsunamifraud@ncis.x.gsi.gov.uk.

Further warnings about charity fraud is available at FraudAid.