The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has released a warning of a scam email that purports to be from the 'Australian Office of Fair Trading', but carries a potentially dangerous payload.

The originating fake address appears as 'fair.trading.complaints@act.gov.au', which attempts to imitate several similar Australian state government offices such as the ACT Office of Fair Trading.

The Australian Office of Fair Trading is a bogus entity.

The attachment contains a potentially damaging virus, says the ACCC.

The ACCC warn consumers "...to delete the email as soon as they recognise it, and to contact their Internet Service Provider or other source of technical support if they have opened the attachment. Any links in the email should not be followed, and consumers should not reply to it, nor should they open the attachment".

The ACCC say the information used by the scammers was not obtained from secure servers or databases owned by the ACT government.