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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.