Cyber Love: Flirting Online with Robots

Nowadays, the web is full of social networking services and dating websites, all of them with a single goal: they attempt to connect people from all over the world. Now, let's suppose you're seeking for a relationship or even for love (oh, well, I heard people doing that). In case you find somebody pretty and you believe that he/she might be your next sweetheart, you're ready to provide all sorts of details about you just to be sure you manage to get him/her on a date. This is extremely dangerous, experts advise, as a new threat begins conquering the world and tries to act just like a real person, convincing people to disclose their private information.

Sergei Shevchenko, of PC Tools, said that CyberLover, a Russian utility discovered on several dating websites, acts just like any other real person, being able to chat with any registered member. The 'bot' is equipped with several chatting lines supposed to create a conversation and trick the chatter to reveal his private details.

"Internet users today are generally aware of the dangers of opening suspicious attachments and visiting unusual URLs, but CyberLover employs a new technique that is unheard of - and that's what makes it particularly dangerous", Sergei Shevchenko said according to Web User News. "As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering. It employs highly intelligent and customised dialogue to target users of social networking systems".

The danger is not that big, but the information can easily be used by any other attacker to conduct identity theft or any other malicious activity using the stolen details. The same source mentioned above noted that CyberLover was at the time discovered only on Russian websites, but that it could easily expand and affect other pages.

That being said, keep in mind that disclosing you private information to an unknown person met on an Internet page can have serious consequences.