Why are electronic greeting cards a bad idea?

The Electronic Greeting Card "Gift"

What's the one piece of information that an e-card service needs to have in order to deliver your card?

The email address of the recipient.

By entering an email address into an electronic greeting card service you're giving them, the greeting card company, a very valuable gift: a known good email address.

Do you trust them with it?

Would the recipient want you to be handing out their email address like that?

Probably not, for several reasons.

Email Address Harvesting - The "Not So Bad" Kind

Some companies will use the email address you gave them in two ways:

• They will send the greeting card you requested to the recipient you specified.

• They will later send marketing materials to that recipient. Technically, since they didn't ask for it, this is spam.

I'll call this fairly benign. While the companies probably shouldn't do this, the ones that fall into this bucket are generally trying to be somewhat above board and may even have indicated that they would do this in the terms of service most people never read. They'll probably also have and honor an unsubscribe link in whatever they send.

But, nonetheless, as a result of your sending a greeting card the recipient got the gift of spam as well.

Email Address Harvesting - The "Pretty Darned Bad" Kind

Not all greeting card sites are "trying to be above board", as I described it above. Some are borderline evil.

Some companies will use the email address you gave them in two ways:

• They will probably send the greeting card you requested to the recipient you specified.

• They will start sending their own marketing materials to that recipient. They may then sell that known good email address to other marketing firms that will flood the recipient's inbox with even more spam; perhaps related, perhaps not.

That "known good email address" is valuable in the spamming world. As a result some e-card sites are set up simply to harvest email addresses by folks who want to give nothing more than a holiday or event-related greeting.

Sadly, as a result, the recipient is also given the gift of spam - lots of spam.

But it gets worse.

Email Address Harvesting - The Worst Kind

So far the worse that's happened is that by sending a greeting card you've also potentially "given" the recipient a lengthy gift of spam.

Some sites do even worse.

Enter an email on one of these sites and you may be giving the gift of malware.

Some - admittedly probably only a few - sites will happily take the email address that you give them, send the greeting card in order to appear legitimate, and then add that email address to their list to begin receiving email laden with attached viruses.

In the worst case, the greeting card itself (which almost always involved clicking on a link) directs the recipient to a malicious web site where his or her computer is then infected with the latest virus, spyware or other form of malware.

Quite the "gift" you've given when it happens.

Are there ANY Legitimate Sources?

Of course.

Do you know which ones they are?

Are you sure?

Me neither.

If you have to, of course stick to sites that you know without a doubt are both legitimate and that do nothing more with that email address you provide than send exactly one greeting card - no more, no less.

And, with all due respect, the fact that a site's privacy policy says "we won't spam" doesn't guarantee that they won't. Even here on Ask Leo!, I say it - how do you know I'm not lying? In fact, you don't. You can choose to believe, as I of course hope you do, but you might also choose to be skeptical. And I can't blame you.

If you're not sure, if you don't know, then you're taking some risks with your friend's email address.

Would they want you to?

I'm guessing not.

Alternatives

Deal only with reputable sources - if you've never heard of the service, then steer clear. On the other hand, a larger company with an established reputation, say the Hallmark greeting card company, is more likely to maintain their reputation and play honestly. They have an extensive privacy policy on their website, and I choose to believe it ... because they are Hallmark.

Do it yourself - let's face it, basic online greeting cards are nothing more than a pretty picture with some well chosen words. A few minutes with a graphics program and your own photos and you can achieve similar results, without involving a third party. Personalizing it with your own photo and message is likely to be more meaningful to your recipients anyway.

Use "old technology" - speaking of more meaningful, since it's a little more work, a paper card that you purchase, sign, address and put in the mail yourself is always going to mean more than something you can do in a click or two online. Send a real card.

The problem is more than just e-cards

Here's the real dilemma: all the risks and problems I've just been discussing apply to any service where you're asked to enter someone else's email address.

Ever seen those links that say "send this article to a friend"? It's possible that the recipient you specify could get a lot more than just the article.

At a minimum think twice before entering someone else's email address into anything other than your own address book or email that you compose yourself.

Make sure you're not about to give more than you bargained for.

(This is an update to an article originally published October 12, 2005.)