Seasoned Greetings

Boy, I must be amazingly popular! The sheer number of notices I have received in the past several weeks telling me that I have received an electronic greeting card has now exceeded the number of people in the world who would actually be likely to send me an electronic greeting card. And who is sending me these notices of joy? Well, no names are given, just:

a School mate
a Partner
a Colleague
a Family member
a Mate
a Class mate

The cards apparently are from real card companies (Hallmark, AmericanGreetings) but closer examination shows that a letter or two is off. That and the fact that neither I nor the sender is specifically named made me more than a little suspicious (as did the fact that I am in touch with only two "school mates" and I can't imagine either of them ever being inclined to send me a greeting card apropos of nothing--or, at all, really).

I did some searching and discovered that this is indeed a hoax, designed to trick you into accessing a site that will load a Trojan horse onto your computer (which was my initial suspicion). More info here. This Greeting Card Hoax first made the rounds in 1999, but seems to have become a little more malicious.

Kind of reminded me of the "I Love You" virus that hit in 2000--my suspicion was immediately raised when I received an e-mail from Cygnus' Senior VP with the subject line "I Love You." Entire books could be written about why that was an incredibly unlikely scenario...