February has always been looked upon as the month of love and romance where friends become lovers and lovers become soul mates.

As February 14th approaches, whether you?re a devotee or a hater of this day, people are busy seeking and buying gifts from flowers, chocolates to an endless array of everything red and heart shaped items. It?s easy to get caught up in moment? Well, guess what? Cyber criminals are also taking their part in the hysteria.

Some common phishing scams that routinely emerge during Valentine?s Day are:

E-Cards

E-cards are the most popular'special occasion'scams and that includes during Valentine?s Day. If you open an e-card you receive unexpectedly, you could put your computer at risk for vulnerabilities such as malware. So, always remember that you need to be on the lookout for phishing and spam messages that are designed to look legitimate, and ultimately infect your computer with malware or get you to divulge sensitive personal information through social engineering tactics. If you are an e-card enthusiast, legitimate providers usually have accommodating information on their websites that you can use to check the legitimacy of electronic greetings. Take time to read these typesof tips before opening e-mail attachments or clicking the URLs within the message.

Emails

When you receive email promotions, be very wary. Do not open unsolicited e-mail or click on any links in messages unless you know where it came from, and what the message contains. Don't let your curiosity put you at risk; no matter how tempting it is to know who your'secret admirer'may be, there's a great chance that in reality it is none other than a cyber criminal! Remember, curiousity killed the cat!

Quick Tips:

• Trust your judgments and examine the message if something seems suspicious.

• Use ONLY trustworthy and reliable websites for online shopping and sending e-cards to your loved ones.

• Make sure your antivirus and antispyware are up to date! If you do not have an antivirus and an antispyware, you can download Ad-Aware Free by clickinghere.

Doesn?t matter how romantic or infatuated you feel, just watch out for these traps and make sure you don?t fall for it.

There is no doubt that Valentine?s Day often offers spammers and scammers alike a golden opportunity to lure people into opening their wallets or giving away their personal information under the deceptive guise of love.

That is why Valentine?s Day security should be on everyone?s mind when buying gifts online or opening an e-card from that special someone.

Buying gifts online

Shopping online is generally safe as long as you stay on trusted and secure sites. However, as the day comes closer, your inbox or junk folder will start to get filled up with Valentine?s Day-themed offers.

While some are truly legitimate, spammers and scammers often promote fake products at highly discounted prices and embed links in the mailer to websites asking for your personal information and delivering nothing in return.

Here are5 tipsto stay protected against phishing:

• Always be very careful of suspicious emails and links. And never fill out forms or signup pages coming from these emails or links.
• Never enter your personal information on a page you don?t know or trust. And always check the URL to make sure you?re not on a phishing site.
• Never send your passwords via email.
• Only sign in to your online accounts when your 100% certain that you?re on the right site. Remember phishing sites impersonate legitimate sites by copying their login page. But one thing online criminals can?t copy is the URL. So always check the URL to make sure it is legitimate.
• Use an anti-phishing browser add-on to automatically warn you when you?re on suspected phishing sites.

Opening e-cards

E-cards are an easy, cheap and fun way to send out greetings to those you love. However, fake e-cards are much too often used by cybercriminals to steal your personal information or infect your computer.

Here are a few tips to keep you safe:

• Verify the sender and sender?s email address. For instance, don?t click on an e-card if the from field is ?ecards@fake.ecardcompany.com?.
• Don?t click on links when you?re not sure of the sender or the intent of the email.
• NEVER download or click anything from an unknown or unverified source.
• Be very careful of attachments from people you don?t know.
• Use recognized greeting cards sites and stay away from the ones you never heard of.

So there you are with your brand new computer, keyboard and mouse at your fingertips. Soon enough, you will find yourself browsing all your favorite webpages, downloading your?must-have? applications and checking out all the cool features your new computer offers. You quickly realize how your new computer system is nothing compared to your old one because it?s fast and is 100% malware-free. But it doesn't matter how cool or glossy your new computer looks or feels, with enough time and by not adopting good security habits, it will soon enough turn to another malware infected machine.

So how can you keep your new PC operating threat free and as smoothly as the first day you bought it?

• Always protect your PC with reputable antivirus security software

Don?t let yourself be distracted by your web browsing and downloading habits as this will leave you vulnerable to all sorts of malware more quickly than you could imagine. With just a single click on the wrong link, image, social site or email, your computer could download and install a variety of malicious software without you realizing.

Downloading trusted antivirus security software will increase the level of protection you have while browsing the internet and help secure all your data and personal information from getting into the hands of cyber criminals and identity thieves.   To help keep your information and browsing habits safe, we recommend downloading the latest version of Ad-Aware FREE to start with.  Perhaps down the line, you would want to invest on a enhanced antivirus software to receive more security features.
Don?t let these threats dictate how you use your computer, just make sure you are protected so you won?t have to!

• Verify that the browser you are currently using is the latest version.

More often than not, your browser will prompt you to download and install the latest updates and patches. This is an important reminder to be taken seriously for ensuring your browser is less vulnerable to malicious attacks that exploit their vulnerabilities. Not applying these updates will leave your computer at risk. Updates don?t take too long and will definitely keep your computer more protected.

• Make sure you download and install all your operating system?s update.

Keeping your operating system up to date is crucial to decreasing your computer system?s vulnerabilities. Always allow Windows? (or any other operating system you are running) to download and install all the latest patches and updates. By doing this, you will be filling in the gaps found by hackers and cyber criminals that leave your computer vulnerable to attacks.

The long awaited Ad Aware 10 will be coming to your screens this February. It is going to be Leaner, Meaner and Faster.

We continuously strive to be the best antivirus program out there and we are 100% certain that you are going to be blown away by it. Who wouldn?t like something that is totally redesigned with sleeker, bolder and stronger array of goodness?

We recognize that performance is essential, so we have made major radical improvements in making Ad-Aware 10 faster and slimmer than it has ever been. There is no doubt that it will be one of the lightest and the fastest security software on the market today.

We?re proud of our achievement and you should too!

Here they are? The All New Ad-Aware 10 family!

AD-AWARE FREE ANTIVIRUS+

With over 400 million downloads worldwide, Ad-Aware FREE has been delivering proven antispyware and antivirus technologies that are both trusted and used by more people than any other online security products. That?s why in conjunction of the new Ad-Aware launch, we have decided to highlight its powerful antivirus components by renaming it to Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+
 
Still packed with the same features as its old sibling, Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ also includes the following features that were, up to now, reserved for our paid products:

• Gaming (silent) mode
• Advanced Rootkit Protection
• Enhanced Real-Time Protection
• Download protection

AD-AWARE PRO SECURITY

It?s not just our Ad-Aware Free that has gone through major improvements; we have also included Ad-Aware Pro in the transition.

Starting this February, Ad-Aware Pro will now be known as Ad-Aware Pro Security. It is a paid upgrade of our Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ version. Enjoy a complete line-of-defense against the most extreme forms of malware and cyber threats for only $3/month.

AD-AWARE PERSONAL SECURITY

Last but not least? Let us introduce you to the latest addition of our legendary Ad-Aware 10 family! The Ad-Aware Personal Security. This is also a paid upgrade of our Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ version. For only $1 per month, you can experience a whole new level of safe online shopping and banking. Ad-Aware PersonalSecurity builds upon the malware protection offered in our free product and adds a powerful web-filter that protects users against phishing attacks and online scams.

Here are the different features offered in the 3 new Ad-Aware 10 products:

Ad-Aware Total Security 10

Ad-Aware Total Security 10 will be coming soon in 2012 and will boldly elevate Total Security to an entirely whole new level. Our current Ad-Aware Total Security users will be glad to know that Ad-Aware Total Security 10 will continue to offer the absolute best all-in-one security, privacy and utility solution on the market.

In a comparative test published in Virus Bulletin?s latest issue, Ad-Aware achieved one of the top results for malware detection. Virus Bulletin independently tests anti-virus products and those products which pass the tests are awarded the VB100. The test review covers a range of criteria, including detection rates, design and usability, and performance.

Ad-Aware Total Security detected 100% of the viruses from the?WildList? collection and 99.6% of trojans, worms, bots and polymorphic threats. With a Reactive and Proactive (RAP) score of 97.2% Ad-Aware scored in the top 5 of 54 applications tested. The results show that the RAP test scores ? which measures each program?s detection capabilities againstnew and emerging malware ? place our software in the upper range among all the ranked anti-virus products, well above many of the top competitors.

VB100

For more information about Virus Bulletin?s test methodologies,check their website.

At Lavasoft, the challenge is demonstrating that Ad-Aware can do what you expect it to do and is among the best applications, not just anti-malware, but also anti-virus. A good way to do that is to have independent, third parties test Ad-Aware, so we're going to keep doing submitting to credible test organisations and publishing the results.

However, having received the VB100 award, it raised an interesting question - given the choice of anti-malware apps, how do you choose which one to use?

We?re curious about this, so let us know what you think. If you feel like participating, go over to ourFacebook pageand let us know.