How To Know Your Email Card Is Safe
Cheers to American Greetings (
NYSE:AM) for their holiday initiative.
One month after proving they were serious about a web presence by acquiring WebShots.com to go with Blue Mountain and other well known ecard providers, the company's online division launched
an education effort today to help consumers know when they are receiving a legitimate holiday card.
Among the company's recommendations were to hover your computer's cursor over the link to retrieve or "pick up" your card. If the card is from AG Interactive or one of its companies, the link shown by your activity will not be a string of numbers (called an IP address), but will be located at
http://www.american-greetings.com.
The company also said that it had set up a special mailbox at "security (at) americangreetings dot com" where consumers could send suspicous email. Additional information is available at the
company's email protection center.
Labels: AGI, American Greetings, email, spoof
FTC Warning: Don't Open Our Mail
The Federal Trade Commission is warning consumers that they are the victims of a
phishing attack. Someone is using email to impersonate the FTC, which is pretty dumb on the intelligence scale.
The federal agency says that the email comes from an address labeled frauddep@ftc.gov. An FTC seal is included in the email, but there are multiple spelling and other errors. There are links and an attachment in the email, both of which could cause your computer to be infected by a virus.
If you received any such email, run your computer's virus checking software to be safe. If you haven't and do, just delete that email. Better safe than sorry this week. If the FTC wants you, I'm sure they'll contact you another way. What makes this so different is that the address
appears to be from the government and the use of the
FTC's logo.
Woe to the company who spoofed the FTC. We expect to be reporting on an arrest any day now.
Labels: email, FTC, spoof
