Well there's certainly a virus out there, "fake alert fab" or something like that. Got it when i clicked on the national geographic link. It hides all your icons, hijacks and changes the desktop and brings up lots of hard drive failure alerts.
I suspect the crummy AV we have at work has something to do with it. Anyhow the IT boys changed my profile and that sorted it, trouble is i've lost lots of shortcuts, favourites and such.
Could have been worse tho'