JUST SAY "NO" to e-Card services! DON'T USE THEM! (and don't send me one!) These "free services" make money by selling your email addresses to SPAMMERS.

Good natured, warm-hearted people all over the globe are unwittingly submitting the email addresses of their friends in order to send a fast, free e-Card this Christmas. And before they know it, both the sender AND the recipient of the e-Card has their IN BOXes full of non-stop SPAM for the rest of their lives.

Not all e-card services are so unscrupulous, but many are. They need to make money some way and spammers are willing to pay for email lists.

If you forgot to send an actual Christmas card this year, don't worry. Just send a thoughtful email with, maybe, a family photo attached. More and more people are sending MS-WORD documents describing their family's activities with a photo embedded. I've always liked these. It's a good way to keep people up-to-date, it's free, and still very personal.

Saludos, MadridMan

A M E N !!! I hate those things !

Sorry everyone,

It was either an e-card or a fruitcake. Doh!

Just joking!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'd take a fruit cake over a spammifying e-card anyday! Merry Christmas!!

I have a couple dumpy email accounts for this reason, to avoid spam into my more personal email addys. However, this post made me realize something,,, will the recipient's email addy be targeted as well?

Oh boy! I think I messed up...

Hi, NO&DO Yankaluz! Long time!

Yeah, I too have a number of "spam catching" email accounts which I use exclusively when being required to enter an email address in order to get register for something.

In the case of Spammers, you can be sure that BOTH parties will be spammed. These people want any and all email addresses they can get their grimy hands on.

How many times have you gotten a spam email claiming they're sending you this email because you signed up SOMEWHERE for SOMETHING - of which you've never heard before?! And beware of the link at the bottom of those emails that asks you to click it to UNSUBSCRIBE. I NEVER CLICK THAT LINK! Why? Because your email address may have been "generated" and, by chance you got the spam email, not because you were in someone's database. So by clicking that link to "unsubscribe", you're really verifying your own email as a valid one - and that too gets sold to the spammers. Best just to leave it alone or to select it as "SPAM" in your email client, if you can, or to BLOCK it outright if you have that ability.

Saludos, MadridMan

Good to be back!

Yeah, very good suggestions!

Thanx for the info, MM.

BTW, there's a bank in Nigeria that needs me to wire them a very small sum of US dollars and in return I will be an instant millionaire!!! The guy sounds really nice, I should probably help them out, eh?