Greeting Card SPAM
There’s a new reason to hate spammers. These rodents have recently discovered that one type of unsolicited email that almost everyone not only opens, but trusts – will go to websites as directed, accept cookies, and perhaps even give up personal information – are electronic greeting cards. So spammers now are sending “you have received an e-greeting card” emails to their spam recipients. The problem is, the emails and websites that they direct you to will take over your computer, give the spammer access to your personal data, and also will set up your computer as a “spam bot” – basically a cog in their army of machines that send more spam out.
This is extremely dangerous, especially the social engineering aspect, because when you trust the email and website of the greeting card announcement, you’re more likely to let it do things to your computer that you shouldn’t – like install software.
Here is a link about the new type of spam: http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/08/if-you-think-a-.html#posts
My advice: if you receive an email that says that you received a greeting card, delete it. As the article above says, “Don’t ever read electronic greeting cards. They have officially become more trouble than they are worth. ”