Cute eCards are Spammers’ Hideout
Written by Carl E. Reid on December 22, 2008
This is that time of year where people send each other those animated or video greeting cards. So spammers are leveraging this social networking eCard tool to set traps for unsuspecting people to click on computer-damaging links. Over on Tech Republic an article provides results of an interesting experiment. The goal was to identify which eCard sites were being used by spammers.
As the researcher on Tech Republic explains, over a two month period he received a few of those animated eCards and videos. Even though he didn’t click on the link in the email to view them, the damage had been done. They already had his email address. So, after two years with this new email address and priding himself on being spam free, he was suddenly receiving four to ten spam emails each day.
He then had several friends resend videos and eCards to these new addresses. He asked them to use the same method that they had used previously by clicking on the ‘Send To A Friend’ link and submitting the new address he provided. He had those email accounts up ahead of time for one week and used them for nothing else. The researcher also set up one account that was not shared as a control.
The spam emails received were not opened. The goal was just to track the increasing flow of emails.
After a few days most of the shared accounts started getting spammed. After two weeks, his friends were receiving the same spam emails he was at the rate of 2 to 4 every other day. An interesting result was realized - by providing email addresses to certain eCard web sites, you are supplying a list of email addresses that have a very high likelihood of being valid and are extremely valuable to spammers.
This rudimentary research project identified Hallmark.com, MSN.AmericanGreetings.com and JacquieLawson.com to be cleared for sending “spam free” eCards. Other web sites not recommended for use due to the likelihood of increased spam are IncrediMail eCards, 123 Greetings, Blue Mountain, BGreetings.com, eGreetings.com, GetFunCards.com, MyGamesZone and Funny-City.com.
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You can add JacquieLawson.com to that list – a technically-incompetent idiot friend of an acquaintance of mine send me a ‘greetings card’ from there recently, resulting in the spam superhighway being unleashed on my Inbox. When will people learn not to pass their friends’ private e-mail addresses onto *anyone*, including their idiot acquaintances who use e-spamcard sites like this one? :Z
Hi Ruth,
I’ve gotten many cards from JacquieLawson.com and have never gotten a flood of spam afterwards. You may want to investigate other causes for the increase in spam you’ve noticed.