E-Mail Greeting Cards May Be Hiding Virus

That might not be an online greeting card from a secret admirer in your e-mail in-box, but rather the latest attempt by spammers to victimize Web surfers.

The Washington Post said Saturday that Internet spammers were at it again in a big way by concealing a computer virus in a link to an online greeting card.

Postini, an e-mail security company, told the Post that since July 2, it has seen about 275 million of these spam messages.

Symantec, an antivirus company, issued a warning.

It is just the latest trick for attackers to get users to install malicious software on their machines, Zulfikar Ramzan, principal researcher for Symantec,told the Post: I think attackers have come to realize simple is good.”

One online greeting-card firm, American Greetings, posted a warning on its Web site reminding customers they can pick up their legitimate cards by going directly to the company’s site.