Bogus e-Cards Still Bothering You?

  Still getting all those “You’ve Received and e-Card” emails?? A reader asked how she can tell if someone is sending her a real e-card - or if it’s another one of those fake ones. So I thought I’d share a few pointers on how to tell if an e-card notice that you’ve received is valid or not:
* The Subject Line - bad ones usually say something vague, like “You’ve received an ecard from a class-mate!” or “You’ve received a postcard from a family member!”. A legitimate card should have the sender’s name and/or email address in the subject line.
* The ‘From’ Line - most often bogus senders just put the name of an e-card site (egreet.com or greetings.net, something like that). A legitimate e-card most often mentions the senders name and/or email address in the from line.
* The body of the email - Two things: 1) A legitimate e-card email will mention a card ID number and some sort of time limit… the phony ones I’ve seen just want you to click their link. 2) On the ‘View your e-card’ link itself, you can mouse-over the link and (depending on your email program you may have to right-click) you see the website address of the link… a legitimate e-card will show something like “http://www.EcardSiteName.com/show-card/sender-bob1235@aol.com-123546-52145412.php” or something like that, which indicates that it’s one card of thousands…. a bogus link, on the other hand, usually looks something like this when you mouse-over it: “http://121.521.655.010/” or maybe “http://121.521.655.010/play-card.exe”, which is just plain scary…
  What to do if you’re not sure it’s safe ~ if you’re not sure of the sender, it’s better to not risk it. Just ask my daughter; her PC had serious problems after she clicked on a fake e-card link.

This entry was posted on September 18, 2007 at 11:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.