Tag: security

Helpful tips to ensure the safe receipt of ecards


American Greetings Offers Simple Reminders on How to Stay Protected This Mother’s Day

CLEVELAND, May 5 — American Greetings Corporation, in response to potential email scams that typically occur during major holidays, is providing the public with some helpful tips to ensure the safe receipt of their Mother’s Day online greetings.

Celebrating Mom through online greetings is a popular trend. In fact, Mother’s Day ranks among the top five holidays in terms of e-cards sent from the American Greetings family of Web sites. To be sure that you avoid any potentially harmful e-mails, Dan Miller, vice president of Product Management at AG Interactive, a division of American Greetings Corporation, offers the following suggestions:

  • Be cautious: If you have any suspicion that the e-card you have received is fraudulent, do not open the e-mail, and do not click on any links within the body of the message if you do. Legitimate e-mails will always give you the option to pick up the e-card by typing in the address of the Web site, rather than clicking on the link.
  • Make sure you recognize the sender’s name: The name of the sender should always be visible in the subject line of the e-mail, or within the e-mail itself. If you do not recognize the sender’s name or the sender’s name is not visible, proceed with caution.
  • Be sure to look for the Web site: The Web site should be identifiable in one or more of the following areas: the “from” field, the subject line or the body of the e-mail itself. If no site is listed, or you do not recognize the site, proceed with caution.
  • Do not follow any links with a simple IP address: Sometimes the IP address is hidden beneath the link and can only be seen by positioning your cursor over the link or right clicking on the link to view properties. The link should start with the domain of the Web site (i.e.http://www.americangreetings.com ) and not a series of numbers commonly referred to as an IP address.

New feature to distinguish Ojolie ecards from fake ecard scams

The article Has the E-Card Scam Storm Blown Over? describes the situation of the recent fake ecard scams.

Greeting card scams became so rampant at the start of the summer that the FBI issued a public warning about the practice.

“If you get an e-mail claiming you’ve received an e-card from a generic ‘friend’ or ‘family member’ rather than from someone whose name or personal e-mail address you recognize, the e-mail is fraudulent and should be immediately deleted,” John Hambrick, unit chief of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said in a statement issued July 25. “Do not follow any of the instructions in the e-mail or click on any link.”

The statement explained that fraudulent e-mails claiming to contain an electronic greeting card from an unnamed individual, such as a “friend” or “classmate,” were flooding e-mail boxes everywhere.

These “phishing” e-mails, it continued, which falsely claim to be from legitimate greeting card companies, instruct consumers to click on a link in the e-mail message to view their e-card. Clicking on the link can potentially introduce a virus into a consumer’s computer.

According to the article, the situation has improved.

As the summer ended, though, scammers moved on to other things, Cluley, of Sophos, maintained. “Recently, they’ve been offering things like links to the latest Beyonce video or links to free computer games,” he said.

However, the public in general may still be suspicious of any ecard email. That is why we have added a new feature in our site to distinguish Ojolie ecard emails from fake ones.

In addition to the existing feature that includes the sender’s full name in the ecard email subject, e.g. “Frederikke Tu has sent you an ecard from Ojolie.com”, we have added an optional email subject field and an optional email message field in the “send card” page. Click here to see a complete sample page.

You can add a personal email subject and message that will be included in the ecard pickup notification email sent to the recipients. It will personalize and distinguish your email from the recent fake ecard email scams and increase the chance that your ecard will be viewed by the recipients.

Instead of the typical email subject, your personal email subject will be used instead, with your personal email message included inside the email.