Electronic greetings cards are a fad that, sadly, has not yet passed and is still quite popular. These things are bad for several reasons, which I’ll outline in today’s post.
- Greeting cards are a waste of time and resources. I can think of no reason that these are required in a business setting, as they just waste time and other resources.
- In order to send an electronic greeting card, you normally are asked for the recipient’s email address, and possibly your own. By supplying this information to XYZ greeting card site, you’ve just opened up an avenue for junk email (spam) to yourself and the recipient.
- Fake electronic greeting cards are a prime vector for email attacks and the spreading of malware. By getting people to click on a link that claims to be a greeting card, the user is likely to want the program to run, not knowing what it really is. I’ve personally had clients ask, repeatedly, that I install Adobe Flash Player on their systems so they could open a greeting card, despite my repeated protests. Sure enough, a few weeks later, their system was infected by malware as a result.
In summary, stop sending electronic greeting cards. If you absolutely must open one that you’ve received, then you can… wait… No, scratch that. There’s no reason for them.
I highly recommend that your company’s acceptable use policy prohibits the sending or viewing of electronic greeting cards, and that your content filtering system be tuned to prohibit these sites whenever possible.
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