With the Valentine's week already setting in and Valentine's Day around the corner, shoppers and couples might be tempted to invest in the numerous deals happening across the online retail sphere. And although that might seem like a harmless prospect, it opens you up to online hackers and cyber criminals, says a new report.
Trend Micro has come up with a new study on the subject, revealing that while partaking in several online deals may seem safe, cyber criminals have already started distributing malicious Valentine-related spam to users with hoax advertisements, promotions and offers.
"Trend Micro found 117 unique sender IPs related to this spam run. Most of the spammed emails primarily came from the United States, followed by India, Ukraine, Canada, and the Netherlands. This slew of Valentine's Day-themed emails came in different languages such as German and Chinese," said Trend Micro's Managing Director, India & SEA Dhanya Thakkar.
"Instead of flowers or candy, spammers gifted their recipients with emails about dating sites, scams, and spam-vertisements (advertisements seen inside spammed emails)."
With several deals varying all over the Internet, offering discounts and coupons with subsidised amounts for users can easily lure masses. However, with the cyber criminals at large, expect most of these promotions to be hoaxes and false agenda.
The idea here is to trick the customer into clicking on fake circulated via social media posts, or opening malicious email attachments. But whatever may that be, this mix of social networking and online shopping can easily lead to a number of online risks if not careful.
Trend Micro threat researchers recently found an assortment of spam emails set within parts of the messages. The Valentine's Day-themed emails, rather than directing you to actual Valentine offers-related sites, lead recipients to scams and spam-vertisements.
And as expected, such spammers, scammers and other online manipulators will be at large this Valentine's Day. Users may need to show more caution when opening email attachments, clicking on links, sharing stuff on social media and even visiting websites.
However, it isn't only Tech Micro that talks about potential online threats this Valentine's Day.
Another security company, Wegilant, has also advised users to stay vigilant while making in-app purchases or clicking on unknown links from different Android apps. After all, their recent report also focuses on how Android is the most vulnerable Operating System that's out there.
Sure there are boatloads of deals to make use of this Valentine's Day, and it isn't quite easy to find out which link or mail will be a threat to you. However, a little carefulness will be required if you are to get away from the clutches of the several online threats.
