Terrifying Computer Owners Part IV

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Google released a survey that shows one in three people with an email account have sent a message containing a love letter. But beware: Odds are that e-card in your inbox this morning isn?t from a secret admirer, but from Ilie the Romanian hacker.

Yes, cyber bad guys are preying on the lovelorn. So much so that the FBI earlier this week issued a warning not to open Valentine?s Day e-cards from people you don?t know. Doing so will most likely give a hacker access to all the personal information on your computer and let the hacker use your machine to send millions of spam emails.

Even if you manage to avoid a Valentine?s virus, odds are the bad guys will get you eventually: There was a massive spike in the amount of malicious computer code flowing across the Internet in 2007, the BBC reports. Some estimates place the total at more than five times the amount in 2006, and one tech-security company says it saw 3,000 unique pieces of malicious code a day. Even the companies we count on to protect us aren?t safe: The Web site for AvSoft Technologies, which makes software that?s supposed to keep malicious code off of computers, was hacked last week; customers who tried to download antivirus software instead downloaded a virus, according to IDG News.

So just don?t download anything, right? Think again. A new study by security researchers at IBM found that 9% of the Web pages on the Internet are criminal, pornographic, or “socially deviant.” And even if you make it to one of the safe parts, say the social-networking site MySpace or the video-sharing site YouTube, you?re still not out of the woods. Gang members are using these sites to recruit new members, KPIX TV reports. And unlike a computer virus, sometimes the violent acts there spill into real life.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.