ReadWriteWeb

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. People, especially Internet users, are either happily coupled up and doing something lovey-dovey, or they're hunting around on dating sites for their soulmate. Because, you know, true love only happens on the Internet. Unfortunately for some, there's danger in online dating.

"Cyber criminals are constantly looking for that common interest to capitalize on and in this case it's love," said Molly O'Hearn, Vice President of Operations at Iovation. "Just like in the face-to-face world, if something seems too good to be true it probably is."

Just a week after Twitter's acqui-hire of Summify, the company has done it again. This time Twitter is grabbing Web security firm Dasient and winding down the Dasient business. Instead of servicing the old customer base, the Dasient team is going to work on Twitter's revenue engineering team. Wait, what?

You might think that Twitter would be looking to snag Dasient in order to curb problems with spam and other attacks on the platform. Instead, it looks like Twitter is hoping to use Dasient's team to prep the platform for self-serve ads that might be launching later this year.

Last May Geeks Are Sexy reported that anyone with access to your computer could access passwords stored in Google's Chrome browser with just a few mouse clicks. When the story inexplicably resurfaced in several Twitter posts this morning, it was time to call Google and find out why they hadn't fixed the perceived glitch.

The Geeks Are Sexy post showed how users could find passwords that are saved to for websites that require a log-in in the "Manage Passwords Section" of the "Personal Stuff" tab under " Preferences" in Chrome. The passwords initially appear to be blocked out but can be revealed by clicking on the account and then clicking a "Show" button.

By now, most folks have heard of phishing scams, and know to be on the lookout for fake PayPal and bank sign-ons. But what happens when your co-workers get a link to a site that looks just like the corporate intranet? Using the Simple Phishing Toolkit (SPT) you can find out.

The concept behind SPT is pretty simple: Most companies spend a fair amount of money on trying to secure their environment. How much do they spend on educating users? Very little, and in many cases nothing at all. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is much better than a pound of cure.

Google has launched a consumer education campaign called Good to Know, which is designed to teach new users of high tech about safety, security and data management online. It's a walk-through with four sections: Stay safe online, Your data on the web, Your data on Google and Manage your data. Each section contains an organized brochure of topics with some instructional diagrams and videos.

Google calls Good to Know its "biggest-ever consumer education campaign." It began with ad campaigns in the U.K. and Germany last fall. The ads highlight security tips like using Google's 2-step verification and checking websites for secure HTTPS connections. The campaign will now be extended to the U.S. with print and Web ads, as well as display ads in New York and Washington D.C. subway stations.

Google has released a new way to securely log into Google accounts on public computers. Using a smartphone, scan the QR code generated at accounts.google.com/sesame. The Google login prompt will appear on your phone, and logging in there will log you into a session on the desktop.

This prevents the user from having to type sensitive login credentials into a public machine, which could be compromised with keylogging software. The new QR code feature is an alternative to Google's 2-step verification. This generates a unique short code on your mobile, which you must input for each desktop login, using the presence of your phone as a form of identification.

Don't be fooled: Nicole Scherzinger, No Doubt and Rise Against have not officially (or even unofficially) signed-on as Ron Paul supporters.

The Twitter accounts of all three recording artists appear to have been hacked early Wednesday morning, according to MSNBC. The hacker or hackers posted messages supporting Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.

"As you would all assume, We DO NOT support Ron Paul," Rise against said in a message to fans after the posts were discovered and removed.

At the end of every year, AV-Comparatives releases a summary report to comment on the various anti- virus products it has tested over the year, and to review their high-scoring products too. This year, the top overall award goes to Kaspersky Anti-Virus. Anti-virus tools from Avira, Bitdefender, ESET and F-Secure were also highly rated. We last wrote about their 2010 test results here where F-Secure won the top berth.

Check Point announced today their Virtual Appliance for Amazon Web Services can now be purchased as an Amazon machine image to directly protect any AWS-based resources running on Amazon's EC2 service. For those of you that are familiar with their integrated security appliance, it is certainly something to consider.

If you thought you had your online banking security situation under control, along comes this chilling blog entry from security vendor Trusteer about some really nasty stuff they observed over the holiday break. And especially for those of you that have chosen paperless statements, you want to read it carefully and understand the exploit.