The End of Online Greeting Cards?

Maybe you thought those animated, singing/dancing e-greeting cards were cute. Maybe you thought they were silly or a total waste of time. Whether you liked them or not, it looks like they may become the victim of the latest phishing/spam scheme.

In addition to cheap mortgages, great deals on Viagra/Cialis and Canadian prescription drugs, and banks I've never heard of needing me to confirm my account information with them, the latest spam to fill my junk folder is fake egreeting cards. Some of these purport to be from American Greetings or Hallmark, just like all the bank emails that are supposedly from Bank of America or First Third Bank (which has to be the strangest name for a bank I've ever heard--are you really First or Third? Make up your mind). Some of them wanted to offer me 4th of July greetings. All of them were fake.

The result: my spam filter is being trained to spot any and all egreeting card messages, collect them and trash them. Which means any legitimate egreetings--for birthdays, holidays, a thank you, or just saying hi--will also be trashed. Unless someone in the legitimate egreeting card business finds a good, dependable way to stand out from the junk.

Stay tuned to see what happens. Just don't wait for me to send you an online card with an update...

Comments

[Liz Greer]

Thanks for the heads-up, Linda... I think we're hurtling toward an era where our identities will be scanned biometrically and approved on a permission list before we're able to send any sort of direct message to anyone. We'll be able to tell our grandchildren stories about how we used to be able to send an email to anyone without sharing our iris/fingerprint/DNA, and they'll be shocked! At least we'll be able to receive birthday greetings, though.