Electronic Greeting Cards: Knowing the Risks
The holidays are among us once again!
With the holidays brings messages of joy, peace and appreciation.
Having become as digital as we have, these messages are shared much less through snail mail and more through electronic means such as email greeting cards (E-Cards), and with this brings substantial risks unfortunately.
It isn’t just Santa returning letters electronically, The Grinch is online as well… and unfortunately in this case, his heart is still a few sizes too small!
Here are a few ways to protect yourself and your contacts when sending and receiving electronic greeting cards (E-Cards):
Use Legitimate Providers
Websites like Blue Mountain, Greeting Card Universe and American Greetings have been providing electronic greeting cards for decades and can be trusted sources of safe E-Cards.
There are many other legitimate e-card sites, but also many information harvesting and cyber security land mines cloaked as ’e-card’ sites.
Please do check online reviews before you use an e-card service so you don’t endanger the online safety and identity of those that you are trying to share good tidings with.
Know the Sender
Don’t click on anything in any email that you don’t recognize the sender, especially in e-cards.
Double Check Particulars
Was the card sent to you specifically or addressed generically (friend, colleague)? Typically if your friends, family and colleagues are taking the time to legitimately send you an electronic greeting card, they typically address you by your name. If the card is sent generically, it’s best to flag it as spam (if you have an email filtering system in place like in our Cyber Security Suite) and delete it.
Don’t download any files
Legitimate E-Cards won’t ask to download .ZIP or EXE files onto your computer, and any E-Card that contains such a thing, should be flagged and deleted immediately.
If you need to send files to your colleagues, and want to send them e-cards… Complete those tasks separately!