Valentine Scams

[Update: clearly, someone at ESET thought they should make up for the dearth of Valentine posts last year: since I posted yesterday, Sabrina Pagnotta has warned us about 7 unromantic Valentines gifts from a cybercriminal, and Graham Cluley advises us that Sexy Russian scammers would love to break your heart this Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re all feeling the love from Bratislava.]

For ESET, Rob Waugh considers six common types of Valentine’s Day scams and how to spot them:  Is your valentine for real? Six signs you might be falling for an online dating scam

One gambit he doesn’t mention is the use of Valentine-related social engineering (using malicious links, fake ecards etc.) to deliver malware as Storm and Waledac (for instance) did. Of course, for that sort of clickbait, pretty much any holiday, news story, hoax video etc. will do.

Actually, it’s become somewhat traditional for my colleagues at ESET to take all the fun out of Valentine’s Day with doom and gloom about incoming scams, though we seem to have missed the boat last year:

• Valentine’s Day Scams: For the love of money
• You can’t wire love (and other Valentine’s Day online romance scams)

Other seasonal blog articles from other vendors are, of course, available. I just don’t have the energy to go looking for them. 😉

David Harley
Small Blue-Green World