Here's how to tell the real cards from the bad ones.
Everyone likes getting cards. Iโd prefer paper-cards to an e-card, but hey, Iโm not choosy. Any card is still a sign that someoneโs thinking well of me. Except, of course, when itโs not really from a friend, but a soul-less bot trying to infect my computer with the latest malware.
In particular, it seems like a day doesnโt go by that I get a Hallmark e-card in my e-mail, and every last one of them has been spam message bearing malware or an attempt to get me to link to a malicious Website. Iโm not the only one.
A quick look over the Web showed me that Hallmark malware spam seems to come in waves. And, yes, weโre getting another tidal wave of them now. As the holiday season approaches, Iโm sure weโll only see more of them.
As it happens, Hallmark does sell real e-cards, so you canโt just delete every e-mail that comes along that proclaims itโs a Hallmark card. Fortunately, there are ways to tell the real cards from the bad ones.
Hallmarkโs own list of how to tell if an e-card has really been sent to you by a friend is a good start. Hallmarkโs list includes:
1. Hallmark e-card e-mails do not include any attachments. To be safe, if you receive an e-card notification with an attachment delete it immediately then empty your โtrashโ or โdeleted e-mailsโ from your email client.
2. A legitimate Hallmark e-mail notification will come from the senderโs e-mail address, not Hallmark.com.
3. The senderโs first name and last name will appear in the subject line. If you do not recognize the name of the person sending the E-Card, do not click on any links in the e-mail. Delete the e-mail.
4. The notification will include a link to the E-Card on Hallmark.com as well as a URL that can be pasted into a browser.
5. The URL will begin with http://hallmark.com/ followed by characters that identify the individual E-Card.
6. Hallmark E-Cards are not downloaded and they are not .exe files.
7. In addition, Hallmark.com will never require an E-Card recipient to enter a user name or password nor any other personal information to retrieve an E-Card.
To these, Iโll add those old basics of never opening e-mail from a stranger and never, ever open attachments or click links from people or groups you donโt know. Sure, it might really be from someone you want to hear from but the odds are orders of magnitude higher that itโs from a spammer.
It would be nice if we could trust our e-mail, but sadly, when it comes to e-mail in 2009, paranoia is the best approach.
