Next Sunday, February 14th, is Saint Valentine’s Day. Since the 19th century, lovers, to express their love for each other have been sending flowers and greeting cards (also known as “Valentines”) on this date. And then the Internet appeared, as well as the social engineering tehniques developed by the cybercriminals to lure users and get them infected/phished or whatever malicious action they have in mind.
We’ve seen it in the past, with worms as Waledac/Nuwar, fake greeting cards, etc. And we’ll see it again. In fact, in the last days we’ve seen an increase of spam messages using this subject to sell different stuff (watches, jewelery, etc.)
Yesterday we published a press release with some general advices, but I’m really concerned as the main problem here is that there are thousands of real “Valentines” going around, and for the average Joe user is impossible to distinguish the bad ones from the good ones.
So these are my two cents: if you want to send a Valentine, do it, but create a new e-mail and write about the feelings you have. And do not include any link or attachment, do not use any of these automatic greeting services, just send a plain text message talking about the love you feel towards the other person, and why life is much better since you met him/her. Your lover won’t ever forget it, there won’t be any computer-infection risk and you both can just enjoy the Saint Valentine’s Day 😉
Nerea, my wife, still has a piece of paper where I wrote 15 years ago about how she made me feel when I looked at her eyes.
Panda Security specializes in the development of endpoint security products and is part of the WatchGuard portfolio of IT security solutions. Initially focused on the development of antivirus software, the company has since expanded its line of business to advanced cyber-security services with technology for preventing cyber-crime.
