Published: July 26, 2007 10:59 am      

Think you’re suddenly very popular? Think again

From the looks of local e-mail inboxes in recent weeks, there’s been a surge of long-lost family members, schoolmates, neighbors, partners, colleagues and even “worshippers” sending an online greeting card.

But apparently none of us are really suddenly popular.

Instead, the messages are but one more avenue hackers are using to infect computers with a malicious worm damaging to Windows-based computers.

As explained on Snopes.com, Postcard scam messages look like they were sent from a legitimate e-card site, with a statement that the card will be viewable for 30 days and an offer to send one in reply.

“Sending out phony e-card notifications is therefore an effective method of camouflaging viruses and inducing unwitting recipients into clicking on links that install malicious programs onto their computers,” Snopes said.

“A wave of malicious messages sent out in June 2007 employed that very technique, arriving in inboxes bearing subject lines such as ‘You've received a postcard from a family member!’ in an attempt to induce recipients into clicking links that install a variant of the Storm Trojan, ‘an aggressive piece of malware that has been hijacking computers to serve as attacker bots’ since early in 2007,” it continues.