E-Cards, E-Greetings, Free E-Cards
Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Graduation -for every season, for every holiday, for every occasion, an e-card can be found. Fact is, according to “Google” there are 90,600,000 results when you “Google” e-card. E-cards are not just nice post cards, but have evolved into video e-cards and audio e-cards.
The fad has become so popular that even “Wikipedia” has a listing for them. The following is just an excerpt from “Wikipedia”
“An e-card is similar to a postcard or greeting card, with the primary difference being that it is created using digital media instead of paper or other traditional materials. E-cards are made available by publishers usually on various Internet sites, where they can be sent to a recipient, usually via e-mail. It also considered more environmentally friendly compared to traditional paper cards. E-card businesses are considered environmentally friendly because their carbon footprint is generally much lower compared to paper card companies and because paper is not used in the end product.
E-cards are digital “content“, which makes them much more versatile than traditional greeting cards. For example unlike traditional greetings, e-cards can be easily sent to many people at once or extensively personalized by the sender. Conceivably they could be saved to any computer or electronic device or even viewed on a television set, however e-card digital content has not yet progressed as far as digital video or digital audio in terms of varied usage.
E-card technology has improved significantly since 1984, about the time of its inception. One technical aspect that has remained mostly constant is the delivery mechanism: the e-mail received by the recipient contains not the e-card itself, but an individually coded link back to the publisher’s web site that displays the sender’s card exactly as it was originally configured.” (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
One important thing that needs to be pointed out, is that when an e-mail recipient opens an e-mail that advertises e-cards, OR that says you have an e-card sent to you… notice that most of the time your computer is rerouted to the e-card’s website.
When opening e-cards it is advisable that you have a good adware blocker or spyware blocker program on your computer. Most of the websites are legit and pose no problems, but many of the “free e-card” sites have programs that plant adware or spyware onto your computer. It is not planted there to ruin your computer, but to research the sites that you visit, gather your online shopping information, or promote other sites and available purchases – and then make this information available to other e-mail advertisers.
In other words, they make money by selling your online shopping and viewing information.
If you see an ad that promotes e-cards you are safe to click on it, because they pay for those ads, but the problem usually arises when you receive unsolicited e-mails promoting them. So, be careful and make sure you’re protected.