On this national day of love, hearts, flowers, and candy that we use to acknowledge those who are close to us, I want to encourage everyone to think about the one thing that ties it all together and makes this day meaningful for many – Cybersecurity! (What else??)

The reason I used this tortured segue is because of a statistic I recently came across that stated that fully one out of every four personal profiles on dating sites are scammers.  One out of four!

When I read that, I reflected on the amount of computer breach attempts we receive here on a weekly basis (dozens), the amount of scam attempts I receive on my cell phone daily (3-5), and the general environment of attempted theft that the internet has spawned. Sidebar question: How come Al Gore isn’t taking credit for that?

I was bemoaning all of this with one of our computer techies and he shared with me that his last employer was a bank and they received 3000 hack attempts daily. I guess I shouldn’t feel so special. It’s truly a brave new world we live in.

So, this Valentine’s Day, spend time telling someone close to you how important they are in your life. And rest assured that your computer cannot be activated to take pictures of you naked that will be sent out to all your contacts unless $1,000 USD in Bitcoin is transferred to a foreign computer server within 48 hours.

Read more tax articles from Paul’s tax blog