Avoid iPad pain and Valentines Day heartbreak

Symantec has warned consumers to be wary of cyber criminals taking advantage of Valentines Day and iPad hype.

By James Heffield / Friday, January 29 2010

Cyber criminals are harnessing the popularity of the iPad and the impending arrival of Valentines Day to entice consumers into opening virus-laden emails, says Symantec.

The security software vendor issued two advisories warning consumers to be vigilant when opening emails in the coming weeks. The lead-up to Valentines Day on February 14 always sparked an increase in phishing attacks and email-borne malware, and the launch of Apple's iPad had only made this time of the year more dangerous, Symantec said.

“The excitement over the iPad has been building for months now, so it’s only to be expected that its announcement would spark a huge spike in search traffic relating to certain terms”, said Symantec security expert Candid Wueest.

“Sadly, this is just the kind of opportunity fraudsters like to exploit by poisoning search terms, and we can also expect to see iPad-related spam and phishing attacks hitting consumers hard over the coming weeks. We’d advise the curious to be on their guard.”

Symantec advised people to be particularly cautious about opening emails from unknown senders, and to exercise caution when clicking on embedded links and attachments.

People should avoid posting their email addresses on publically accessibly pages, to prevent them being gathered by bots used by spammers, and if a spam email was received, it should never be responded to, Symantec said.

As always, it was important for people to ensure their applications were up to date with the latest security patches and that a comprehensive security suite was installed on their computer.