Valentine's Day breeding online security theft!

Valentine's Day represents one of the big shopping periods of the year.

Online shoppers will be seen expressing their love this week as both online retailers and spammers continue to take steps to attract and convert shoppers.

But after opening the attachment, malware is downloaded on to the user's computer.Symantec detects the attachment as Backdoor.Trojan whose primary functionality is to enable a remote attacker to have access to or send commands to a compromised computer.

This year, according to Symantec, Valentine's Day spam messages are offerring discounts on jewellery, dinning opportunities, and expensive gifts to shoppers. The top word combinations used in spam messages includes: Find-Your-Valentine; eCards-for-Valentine; Valentine's-Day-Flowers. The e-card spam message arrives with a malicious attachment called ValentineCard4you.zip.

This kind of phishing and pharming is on the rise especially on this occasion. The sheer volume of public involvement in topical events makes them rewarding opportunities for cyber criminals. The reason being as simple as disclosing personal information online by users seeing lucrative and attractive offers oline.

"Spammers find new ways to get unsuspecting users to download malicious content, buy fake products, open attachments and fall for event driven scams. We advise users to be cautious when handling unsolicited discount offers or suspicious emails or URLs that seek personal information," said Abhijit Limaye, Director, Development, Security Response, Symantec.

According to McAfee's findings from its '2013 Love, Relationships, and Technology survey'; the need for consumers to take steps to protect themselves from cyber-stalking and exposure of private information.

Here is why:

• 86% of smartphone owners have personal and intimate information on their mobile devices, such as bank account information, passwords, credit card numbers and revealing photos, yet only 79% have password protection on their devices. This leaves a gap in personal data protection, which results in exposure.
• 77% of adults have had their personal content leaked to others without their permission. Additionally, 3 in 10 ex-partners have threatened that they would expose risqué photos of their ex online.
• Despite the risks, 53% Indians still plan to send sexy or romantic photos to their partners via email, text and social media on Valentine's Day. Bifurcating the data according to source, it was found that, 60% Mumbaiites, 51.8% Delhiites and 47% Chennai residents plan to share their sexy or romantic photos to their partners via email, text and social media on Valentine's Day.
• It's not just revealing photos that people need to worry about. 23% of adults have had their personal content leaked to others without their permission. Sharing information at every turn, increases the likelihood of leaked data and identity theft. Bank account numbers (63%), health insurance ID's (64%), email accounts (75%), and passwords (47%) have all been shared with relationship partners.