Internet chatroom romantics beware: your next chat may be with a clinical computer, not a passionate person, trying to win your personal data and not your heart, an online security firm says. A Russian website called CyberLover.ru is advertising a software tool that, it says, can simulate flirtatious chatroom exchanges. It boasts that it can chat up as many as 10 women at the same time and persuade them to hand over phone numbers.

An Australian anti-virus software firm, PC Tools, has warned that the software could be abused by identity fraudsters trying to harvest people's personal details online. The Russian site denied it was intended for identity fraud.

The program, so far available only in Russian, will go on sale around February 15, just after St Valentine's Day, said the CyberLover.ru website.

CyberLover's website explains that the settings on its program can be changed to attract men, persuade people to visit a website or encourage them to top up mobile telephone credit, and that all the data collected will be stored.