Alert! Phishing attacks increase during Valentine's Day

Kaspersky Lab experts have detected a sharp increase in phishing activity from cyber criminals who offer a variety of romantic products on the website to users during Valentine's Day, February 14 2019. The total amount of attempts by users to visit fake sites with romantic themes is detected and blocked during the half first February 2019 higher.

Compared to February 2018, the increase has doubled. Compared to 2018, this is more than 4.3 million this year.

According to statistics, the most affected countries are Brazil (more than 6.4% of the detection), Portugal (more than 5.8%), and Venezuela (5.5%). Then followed by Greece (5.3%) and Spain (5.1%).

Kaspersky Lab analyzes the phishing actions on the web in the first half of February 2019, especially in the days leading up to Valentine's Day. This analysis shows that cybercriminals specifically exploiting pre-order gift items and drugs are traps to lure users into sharing personal data to please their loved ones. This again proves the findings of the Kaspersky Lab survey itself which indicates that when there are things related to love, users tend to lose their vigilance.

"Our research shows that there is no difference between phishing activities that exploit major sporting events, fake payment bills, or products that contain romantic elements. They all just need to direct the user's emotions, whether it's excitement, stress, or affection. Thus, almost everything can be a tool of attack in the hands of cyber criminals. "The detected increase reminded us that we must always be careful when exploring the web, even to buy flowers for our loved ones," said Andrey Kostin, Senior Web Content Analyst at Kaspersky Lab through his official statement.

These cyber criminals will look for any way to steal user data and money. Phishing is one of the most popular and easiest social engineering techniques to exploit online users.

Through phishing, cyber criminals commit fraud to obtain the user's identity. Starting from passwords, credit card numbers, bank account details, and other important financial information.

Emails and phishing websites are usually disguised as official sites that encourage users of one thing or another to immediately enter their personal data. The users themselves will usually be triggered by a trendy agenda at that time such as a big sporting event or a special day like Valentine's Day.

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