As couples prepare to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Sunday, a cybersecurity expert has urged South Africans to practice safety when using online dating sites.
Shawn Phakade says online dating application users should be cautious when disclosing their personal information and be weary of their privacy settings.
“I think you need to be able to look at the inconsistencies that you will get from whoever is communicating with you. People that are going to scam or trying to scam you will profess excessive romantic interest that they love you. They’ll do whatever to try and lure you in for you to give in your personal details or to give them money.
What these people will do is they’ll try to move you off these dating apps and move you off to another messaging app where they forward and the scamming cannot be detected,” Phakade says as he shares some safety guidelines for dating apps.
Full discussion on this is in the video below:
Valentine’s nights in keep chocolate sales buoyant for Belgian makers
Not even coronavirus could kill the romance in Belgium on Friday where chocolate-makers said Valentine‘s Day sales were holding up, though the absence of tourists and office workers had taken their toll.
Brightly-coloured hearts with caramel ganache centres filled the display cases at Wittamer in Brussels as every year, but the slow trickle of customers and longer-than-usual list of telephone orders were evidence that the coronavirus pandemic was keeping shoppers away.
Staff said they had produced half the normal quantity of small heart-shaped gift boxes typically offered to colleagues and friends as there was not enough footfall in the town-centre store.
But with restaurants and bars closed and fancy foreign holidays barred by border closures, those in the mood to celebrate said chocolate was a worthy substitute as a romantic gift.
“Otherwise we certainly will go to a restaurant but unfortunately that’s not possible so we stay at home and we make it comfy on our own and with the kids. And the chocolates of course,” said Koen Mathijs, who was picking up several boxes for colleagues to offer to their spouses.
Out back, Easter bunnies were already keeping a watchful eye on the swirling vats of melted chocolate in the Wittamer workshop as the last of 2021’s hearts rolled off the production line.
Chef Christophe Roesems said that he and the team had chosen to keep the colours bright and the flavours familiar for their Valentine‘s collection after a trying year.
“Travelling is banned, the bars and restaurants are closed, so people want to treat themselves at home by buying good quality chocolate, even if that means paying a bit more,” he said.
Brand Leonidas is a major player in Belgian chocolate with 400 shops at home and nearly 1 500 abroad.
European sales director Chantal Goossens said in a normal year 70 tonnes of chocolate might pass through the biggest of their stores in the centre of Brussels, where the cobbled streets are lined with stands selling souvenirs and waffles, but this year it would be more like 10 tonnes.
Globally sales in the six months from July to December were down 20 percent, Goossens said, but the picture varied widely, with stores in airports and business districts hard hit whilst those in provincial town centres were doing well.
Though it was too early to give Valentine‘s Day numbers she said that their Belgian-based factory was producing the same number of Valentine‘s truffles and pralines as in 2020. – Additional reporting by Reuters
