December 11, 2007 -- A computer program that poses as a flirtatious internet surfer is being used to steal people's identities from online chatrooms, experts claim.

According to analysts at online security company PC Tools, the robot - known as CyberLover - is being used by criminals to gather information on internet chatters.

Intended for use by lonely hearts with no time to talk, CyberLover takes on a series of different identities and fools chatters into believing they are talking with a real person. Users can direct the nature of the questions, and the program will then compile a report on the person it has been talking to and deliver it back to its owner.

Although the system is aimed at lovelorn Russians, experts at PC Tools claim criminals are using CyberLover to ask victims a series of targeted personal questions which can be used in identity theft.

"The potential number of victims could be very substantial," said PC Tools analyst Sergei Shevchenko. "As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering."

The ability to fool a person into believing they are talking with a human rather than a computer is held as one of the cornerstones of artificial intelligence. Although experts do not believe CyberLover would pass the Turing test - designed by mathematician Alan Turing as a measure of machine intelligence - it is one of the more sophisticated tools in circulation.