This Valentine’s Day people around Australia will be opening their hearts to the possibility of new relationship, signing up in droves for online dating sites.

Sadly this influx of users also opens the door to scammers seeking to take advantage of those looking for love.

As Nick FitzGerald, Senior Research Fellow at IT security company ESET, noted, in 2015 2620 Australians lost close to $22.7 million to romance scams, $4.4 million of which was lost during the month of February alone.

An it’s on the rise. Last year that jumped to 4,100 people losing $25.5 million, according to the ACCC.

“Every year we see a spike in online dating activity around Valentine’s Day,” FitzGerald said. “Unfortunately, this rise in traffic gives cybercriminals extra incentive to deploy scams. People need to stay extra vigilant and pay attention to the warning signs.”

These scams can take the form of fake profiles used to ‘catfish’ trusting users, identity theft or even blackmail. The latter usually see the scammer persuade users to send them compromising images or information and then demand money not to release them online.

Of course, they’re not always that simple. Just last year a Western Australian woman was sucked into becoming a mule for stolen goods by a man she met online.

As ABC reported at the time, the victim said he sent her Valentine’s gifts and “said all the right things”. After a month, he then asked her to forward a package to Thailand for him; one turned into one a day – mostly expensive clothing and fashion accessories.

“She was trans-shipping goods delivered to her address, in her name, to Bangkok,” FitzGerald said. “This all started on an online dating site, and ended up with her, unwittingly, receiving goods ordered fraudulently.”

How to avoid falling victim.

To avoid falling victim to scams like this, FitzGerald offers online daters the following advice:

“The best tip for avoiding online dating scams is to follow your gut, if something doesn’t seem right, it’s probably not,” FitzGerald advised. “Sadly though, confirmation bias is probably hardest to recognise in matters of the heart.”