Hackers and spammers love just about any Hallmark holiday. However, extra effort does seem to appear on their behalf around Valentines Day. Maybe they are playing on our emotions and hoping that a harmless looking email with a warm and fuzzy Valentine header will make it past our usual email sorting defenses. Regardless, it is important to be vigilant at all times(especially at holidays) when going through your inbox.  If you are not, you may compromise your computer and all your personal data that you may be housing on it.

Back in 2007, many unsuspecting computer users fell prey to the Storm Virus that was released by an army of hackers and spammers. It was deployed again in 2008 utilizing Valentine Day spam and is estimated by security professionals to be used again in 2009.  “Clearly the old Storm folks are working as hard as they can to build up their new botnet, and are following the old tried-and-true methods of centering their social engineering tactics around holiday themes,” said Masiello in a post to the MX Logic Blog. Masiello goes on to say:”But it still impresses me that tactics like this continue to work and be so effective, despite how many times it gets recycled”

SmartSecurityPeople.com wishes all of our readers a wonderful Valentine’s Day. We hope that you and your computers remain safe from unwelcome Valentine viruses.