From Sweet To Scam
Victoria Cox
This Valentine’s Day, be mindful of possible holiday scams. Holidays are the ideal time for scammers and frauds to attack. The most common scams people face on Valentine’s Day are phony florists, e-cards, and deceiving package deliveries.
Valentine’s Day began as a celebration of fertility. “While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia,” said History.com.
Lupercalia was a fertility celebration to the Roman god, Faunus, and the Roman founders, Romulus and Remus. A goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification, were sacrificed. The goat skin was dipped into the sacrificial blood and then swiped on women and crop fields. Bachelors drew the women’s names, placed on paper in an urn, for their matching.
In recent years, the holiday of Valentine's Day has evolved into a marketing idea that scammers take advantage of. “Scammers want to get close to you on Valentine’s Day—close enough, that is, to swipe your credit card number, steal your personal information, and infect your computer with a virus that lets them plunder your address book for future victims,” said Catherine Fredman from Consumer Reports.
Today, people planning to celebrate Valentine’s Day are in danger of being a scam victim. Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity for scams. E-cards are sent to people in attempts to gather their personal information, phony delivery services gather your personal and credit information without delivering the package you ordered. More personally, catfishing takes place more frequently around the holiday as well.
http://www.consumerreports.org/consumer-protection/beware-of-these-valentines-day-scams/
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/shopping/valentines-day-scams-to-avoid/
http://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day/history-of-valentines-day
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