Valentine’s Day is the time of roses, chocolate, phishing, and malware. Yep, the love letters you are getting to your inbox might be a scam!
Valentine’s Day is perfect for social engineering
Valentine’s Day is one of the recurring phishing themes in addition to Black Friday and Christmas. There are two reasons: gift shopping and curiosity.
Chocolate, flowers, and jewelry are typical Valentine’s Day gifts, so cybercriminals are crafting phishing messages that lure people with fake deals. According to Sophos, the phishing site could be imitating a well-known brand.
It’s not only the buyers that should beware. KnowBe4 reminds us of Valentine’s Day delivery scams. You could receive a text or an email stating that you are getting some flowers or a food basket, and you should pay a special delivery fee because alcohol is delivered.
Many find it hard to resist if you get an electronic greeting card from a mystery person. Maybe that coworker is secretly in love with you after all? Most probably, that’s a professional cybercriminal who uses social engineering tricks, such as appealing to emotions and curiosity to get you. Unfortunately, clicking that interesting link could get you malware.
Romance scammers are after your money
What if there is no phishing link in the message? It could be a romance scam!
A scammer could adopt a fake identity and try to establish a relationship on social media or dating sites. The Finnish Victim Support Finland and the FBI both warn that these con artists are excellent at manipulating people, so it’s very easy to believe them.
Romance scammers have various reasons for not meeting in person. They could argue that they live far away, traveling for work takes too much time, or that they have a sick kid to take care of. Soon after the relationship has begun, they start asking for money. As appealing and believable as the story might be, romance scammers are after money.
To balance out the bitterness of all these scams, let’s eat some sweet pie!
Hearty lingonberry and white chocolate pie
For this Valentine’s Day, I decided to take out the heart-shaped pie dish I haven’t used for a while. The combination of slightly sour lingonberry and sweet white chocolate intrigued me, so I mixed and matched a few pie recipes and came up with this treat.
Ingredients for the dough:
- 1 dl melted butter
- 1 egg
- 1 dl sugar
- 1,5 dl unsweetened yogurt
- 2,5 dl wheat flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar
- 0,3 tsp salt
Filling:
- 2-2,5 dl lingonberries
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 70 g white chocolate
Mix the eggs and sugar into a foam. Pour in the melted butter and yogurt. Mix the dry ingredients first together and then to the dough mix.
Preheat the oven to 200 ºC. Pour the dough evenly into a pan. Sprinkle the lingonberries and sugar on top. Cut the white chocolate into tiny pieces and sprinkle them on top. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. The center of the cake might be a bit moist when you take it out, but it will settle when you let it cool.
Bake Security In 