COMPUTER users have been warned about a new scam which has been picked up by North Yorkshire Police.

The force's Digital Investigation and Intelligence Unit warned that a number of individuals had received the threatening emails from hackers.

In a tweet on Friday they wrote: "There's a new wave of bomb threat emails going round today.

"Email demands payment in Bitcoin or sender will detonate a bomb on the premises. Email is non-specific, threat is not credible and is a scam. Don't panic, don't pay, just delete."

A spokesman for the DIIU said the latest hoax emails were not connected to George Duke-Cohan - who was jailed earlier this month for three years after sending hoax emails which caused the evacuation of hundreds of schools and part of an American airport - or the 'Apophis' group of hackers and hoaxers he was connected to.

The spokesman said the latest scam was "a similar method to the group who sent thousands of sextortion emails with passwords in last month".

He said: "The scam is on a mass scale in the hope that someone will pay. There's no specific threat in any of the e-mails, it's all quite generic but the scammers will hope that enough people will be scared enough to pay. Our advice is not to panic, not to pay, and not to reply."