Fake Greeting Card Emails Resurface

Written by Carl E. Reid on November 5, 2008

Over the last few months I’ve noticed a resurgence of e-card spam scam from our unfriendly neighborhood spammers.

According to security expert Bill Mullins, in the last year, email inboxes have being swamped with similar scamming emails from fraudulent sites like Greetings.com, and 2000Greetings.com, amongst others.

This time around, the domain name being used by these scammers is Greetingcard.org, which is a legitimate site of The Greeting Card Association, a greeting card industry trade association. This organization makes no bones about it when it says on its website, “We do not publish cards, nor do we have an e-card pick up. If you receive an e-card notification from our association, it is fraudulent and should be deleted”.

Bill goes on to further explain that this type of socially engineered email scam is based on playing the human curiosity card. This scam exploits the fact that people are naturally pretty curious. The surprise factor appeals to people to further make them want to open one of these dangerous scam emails. Receiving good news feeds into the “wow” factor that heightens the effect of making people want to open these bogus email greeting cards. Spammers are counting on all these different factors to lure people into the trap. Many people fall for it with disasterous results being unleashed on desktop computers or company networks.

In this scam, the body text of the message urges a person to click on an embedded link so that you can see the greeting card. However, clicking on this link will lead to malware being installed on your computer.

According to The Greeting Card Association, a legitimate e-card notification will always include the full name or personal email address of the sender. Furthermore, the sender will never be identified by a generic term such as a “friend” or “associate”, terms that are frequently used in fraudulent e-card scams.

Pass this information on to your email user community before the holidays get into full swing for sending more electronic greeting cards.

About Carl E. Reid

Developing his career from the mail room to the board room, Carl E. Reid has achieved success by skillfully blending 40 years of technology and business intelligence experience with his passion for helping companies succeed. Carl is founder and CEO of NetTECH Systems Reid & Associates, Inc., an emerging technology consulting company located in the New York City area. One of his specialties is 15 years as a collaboration and email infrastructure consultant. He has implemented and supported Lotus Notes/Domino and other types of SMTP gateway/network configurations in small to large global companies up to 33,000 employees. Some of his clients have included IBM, Citi, JPMChase, Oxygen, LVMH - Moet Hennessy, MeadWestvaco, non-profits and professional organizations. Carl is a Savvy Business Owner, Public Speaker and Author. His articles have appeared in Network World, Computer Monthly magazines and hundreds of web sites. Combining business technology consulting with professional blogging, Carl specializes in advising clients how to best leverage the Internet as a tool for high impact visibility. Carl's speaking style combines humor with expertise, and his advice is always down-to-earth and practical. He personally publishes Library of Congress recognized newsletter blog, http://www.SavvyIntrapreneur.com and http://www.iTechSpeak.com. Carl wrote the original "Professional Blogger Job Description", being used as standard document within companies. As a business career coach, Carl teaches professionals how to run their career as a profitable business.
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