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Note: Feb. 14 is a favorite holiday for spammers, who are relying on an old standby in these down times: male insecurities

Valentine’s Day has long been a gold mine for florists, candy makers, restaurateurs — and spammers. Valentine’s Day gift Every February, junk e-mailers send out millions of messages allegedly promoting holiday getaways or last-minute gifts for that special loved one. In the days leading up to the holiday this weekend, the amount of spam is spiking again, anti-spam experts agree.

This year, however, many spammers looking for ways to score clicks are going back to basics. According to Symantec (SYMC), the anti-spam company that has been monitoring Valentine’s-related spam traffic this month, the most popular type of spam this season tends to focus on one of the old favorites of the spam industries, appealing to men and their insecurities. “This year the top three types of spam tend very much to be related to what we call ‘male capabilities,’” says Michael Chue, managing director for Hong Kong and Taiwan at Symantec. While he doesn’t have data yet available on the amount of such spam, Chue says “in the last couple of weeks we can see this type of spam increasing.”

Are men, hurt by the worst global downturn since the Great Depression, more vulnerable to this sort of junk e-mail? Chue won’t speculate, although he does point out spammers are typically very sensitive to the free market. “The statistics tell the spammers these are very popular,” he says.

Rejiggering Malware

Spammers are also taking advantage of Valentine’s Day to push so-called malware, or malicious software, in necklaces new directions. For instance, Symantec says spammers have shifted gears for Waledac, a type of malware that in the past has hijacked computers and forced them to send spam peddling “performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals.” Ahead of the holiday, Waledac “is now distributing misleading applications,” Symantec says on its Web site, via Valentine’s Day-themed messages. Waledac is “attempting to leverage Valentine’s Day as it attempts to trick unsuspecting users into downloading and running the malicious binaries.”

Spammers are also infecting computers from more places worldwide. According to recent statistics from Sophos, a spam specialist from Oxfordshire, England, the U.S. remains the world’s largest source of spam, accounting for 20% of the total worldwide. China, including Hong Kong, is No. 2, with 10%. That’s to be expected, since the U.S. is the world’s largest economy and China the world’s largest country, says Paul Ducklin, head of Asia-Pacific technology for Sophos. “You would expect those countries to dominate,” he says.

A Lot from Small Countries, Too

What’s surprising — and troubling — is the extent to which spammers have been able to hijack computers in much silver bangles smaller countries. Vietnam, for instance, has fewer than 20 million Internet users, of whom only 2% have broadband connections. Even so, Vietnam accounts for almost 2% of the world’s spam. Looking at spam sources worldwide, “there are places where it’s not easy or cheap to get on the Internet,” says Ducklin. Yet spammers still manage. “When you take the outliers, you realize what a global problem it is,” says Ducklin.

See BusinessWeek’s slide show of the world’s biggest spam-producing countries.

Valentine’s Day has become hugely popular here and in other Indian cities thanks to the mindless opposition to the harmless event by activists of Hindutva outfits in recent years.

But when Pramod Mutalik, a publicity-seeking functionary of the little-known saffron outfit, Valentine’s Day gift Sri Rama Sene (SRS), sent his hooligans to attack women in a pub in Mangalore — even inviting television crews to cover it — last month, he struck a raw nerve in cities, enraging millions of young, educated and liberal Indians.

Thanks to the power of television, the mass media and the internet, Valentine’s Day this year will be celebrated in a grand manner in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The overwhelming response from young, urban educated Indians to the ‘anti-Talebanisation’ campaign being launched by individuals, activists and NGOs has come as a bolt from the blue to Hindutva outfits.

In Mumbai, for instance, the Shiv Sena, which has for years been opposing Valentine’s Day celebrations, has maintained an unusual silence on the issue. In fact, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which is assiduously wooing the urban youth in Mumbai, has openly come out in support of Valentine’s Day celebrations.

Jitendra Avhad, a leader of the NCP, has set up a stall outside the busy Thane station, selling V-day cards. Thane is a traditional Shiv Sena/Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) stronghold. Gift shops, hotels and restaurants, jewellery retailers and others are also openly advertising special V-Day promotions in newspapers, on television and in the outdoors.

In fact, even retailers in Sena bastions like central Mumbai report a huge demand for greeting cards,bangles gifts and accessories. An emerging lower-middle, consuming class, comprising young collegians, has taken to Valentine’s Day in a big way, surprising parties like the Shiv Sena, the MNS and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

And with general elections due in just a few weeks — to be followed later by state assembly elections — political parties including the saffron ones are reluctant to alienate any section of the electorate.

The anti-SRS agitation gained momentum after a group of young women netizens launched the ‘Consortium of pub-going, loose and forward women,’ on social networking site Facebook; they are busy collecting ‘pink chaddis’ (panties) to be sent to Mutalik and his cohorts on Valentine’s Day.

Members of Hindutva outfits are usually dubbed ‘chaddi-wallahs’ for the ‘khaki’ shorts worn by cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent body of saffron organisations.

About 25,000 women have signed up for the ‘pinky chaddi’ campaign of the Consortium.

Even the Mumbai Press Club is hosting a Women for Excellence (WE) bash on Friday, urging women rings journalists to “don some pink, turn up for the bash and let the Ram Sene turn red.”

nithin@khaleejtimes.com