Fake gifts, romantic trips, dating apps like bait. These are the online dangers ahead of Valentine’s Day, a tempting opportunity for hackers like all popular events, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, to strike and claim victims. This is the alarm launched by several security companies in view of February 14th.
For example, according to Check Point Software Technologies, as early as January 6% of new Valentine’s Day internet addresses were considered dangerous. And a phishing scam takes advantage of the ‘The Millions Roses’ brand, which sends flowers to doors.
Bitdefender, on the other hand, has detected spam campaigns that have increased sevenfold since February 6 and in particular linked to the lure of a romantic vacation. While for Kaspersky, in addition to mimicking popular dating apps, cybercriminals have started spreading emails posing as women looking for a partner. The scam involves sending an email containing a direct link to a phishing page that mimics a dating website and asks the victim to complete a form indicating their preferences. Finally, the user is asked to enter their banking credentials. It goes without saying that, in the end, the victim loses data, money and the opportunity to meet new people.
Experts, as a precaution, recommend not to connect your profile on these apps to any social networks and not to share your mobile number or other messaging contacts; but also, if you browse these dating apps, don’t download other apps or visit sites that might be phishing pages. Be wary of bots, ie automated responses that could steal money or personal data and be wary of offers that are “too good to be true”.
Source: Ansa
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
