Warning: Valentine’s Day eCards Pose Serious Security Risk

Are you planning on sending an eCard to your loved one this Valentine’s Day? Do you think your special-someone will receive your eCard without it getting caught by a spam filter?

This Valentine’s Day brings about another holiday that hackers can use to their advantage. You may ask, how would they use Valentine’s Day to affect more computer users? It is very simple for them, more people will be expecting to receive something for Valentine’s Day from Valentines eCards to flowers and candy to emails just to say that someone cares. Of those electric greeting cards that are sent it is sure to be many of them that are malicious or found to be spam messages that link to a malicious site to download malware.

Electric greeting cards or eCards have been something cybercriminals have used for several years to spread malware. Security researches lately have taken a poll, posted on Sophos, that says about 82% of system administrators say electronic greeting cards put computer security at risk. Be assured, come Valentine’s Day, the cybercriminals or hackers will be increasing their efforts in sending out spam messages disguised as Valentine’s eCards. What better way to trick someone than by sending a Valentine through an eCard? You pretty much know with a certainty that the recipient will open the eCard message. If you had a secret admirer who sent you an eCard then why wouldn’t you open the message?

Below is a video that Sophos has created and posted on their site about Valentine eCards in the office. This video is pretty hilarious and while it may be portrayed with a humorous tone, the idea that eCards may be dangerous is a very real issue that could affect everyone.

Sexist public information film about Valentine eCards in the office from Sophos Labs on Vimeo.
Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that this poll is not scientific and is provided for information purposes only. The comments expressed on this page are those of a subsection of poll participants, and not necessarily those of Sophos. Sophos makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the results other than that they reflect the choices of the users who participated. Sophos reserves the right to edit participants’ comments for the purposes of clarity, brevity and decency. Sophos reserves the right not to publish the comments of all participants.

Will you still send an eCard to someone this year for Valentine’s Day? Do you expect to receive several Valentine’s Day eCards come February 14th?