Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  I hope your day is a good one free of scams and identity theft.  Electronic greeting cards have become very popular and with good reason.  Even if you don’t remember a birthday or delay sending a holiday card until the last minute, you can send an electronic greeting card, often for free, and have it delivered immediately.  Many electronic greeting cards are quite inventive with videos and music, as well.  But, unfortunately, you can always count on scam artists and identity thieves to try to spoil anything and electronic greeting cards are no exception.  The scam starts when you get a phony electronic greeting card that requires you to click on a link to read the card.  If you click on one of these phony greeting cards, you will end up downloading a keystroke logging malware program that will steal all of the information from your computer and end up with you becoming a victim of identity theft.

TIPS

One of the first things to notice is who is indicated as the person sending the card.  If it states that the card is being sent by “a friend” or “an admirer,” you can be pretty sure that it is a phony card.  However, even if the card uses the name of someone you know, it still is risky to open the card without confirming with an email or a phone call that your friend actually did send you the card.  It is also important to keep your security software including anti-virus software and anti-malware software installed and up to date at all times.