Valentine's Day emails may seem sweet enough - until the heart attacks. Photo / Babiche Martens
Valentine's Day emails may seem sweet enough - until the heart attacks. Photo / Babiche Martens
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SYDNEY - Lovers looking for that perfect gift are warned to be on the lookout for dodgy Valentine's Day emails.
The warning comes from online security company MessageLabs, which has detected a rise in the number of emails wooing computer users with love on their mind.
The spam emails contain lines such as Looking for that perfect Valentine's Day gift? or Make Valentine's Day Night a memorable one, which contain links to a website selling a herbal formula called VPXL.
MessageLabs product marketing manager Phil Routley said it only took one person to complete an order to make the spam successful.
"We scan three billion emails a day, and of those 85 per cent are spam. Two per cent of those are purely this Valentine's Day spam, so there are literally millions of these emails going out," Mr Routley said.
"All they need is one person to buy their product for them to make a profit, because the cost of sending spam out is almost nothing."
The Valentine's Day spam emails appear to be emanating from a network of computers labelled the Storm Botnet.
"Storm Botnet is made up of infected PCs. Your computer or laptop could be part of this botnet used to send spam out," Mr Routley said.
Botnets have grown in popularity among hackers and spammers because they are harder to shut down than a single email account or computer.
According to MessageLabs, the Storm Botnet now includes infected computers across 52 countries, including Australia and New Zealand.
Mr Routley advises all computer users to remain alert to spam appearing in their inbox and resist the urge to click on them straight away.
"Human reaction is you see a web link and you click on it," he said.
"If you get an email from an unknown source, be vigilant."
