email protection resource center

MSN Greetings's first priority is always you, our customer, which involves providing you with information on how to protect yourself from ecard email scams impacting our industry.

Security Alert: MSN Greetings will never ask you to reset your MSN Greetings account password through an email. If you receive an email requesting you to reset your password, do not open it or click on any links contained within the email. Report any suspicious emails to security@msn.americangreetings.com.

Phishing emails: Fraudulent emails containing malicious links sent from individuals portraying themselves as messages from legitimate companies. There have been email campaigns that claim to be an ecard from MSN Greetings which contain an attachment that will infect your computer with a malicious and destructive virus. It is important for you to know that legitimate emails from MSN Greetings will never contain an attachment. Our emails are validated with industry standard security keys for additional protection and offer an alternate method for you to pick up your ecard. When you receive a legitimate ecard from MSN Greetings you can bypass clicking on any links within the email and instead go to our site, click on the "ecard pickup" link found in the upper right corner of the homepage and enter the code provided in the email.

• Simply opening an email should not result in any concern. Following links embedded in the email is where consumers have to be cautious.
• If you have any suspicion that the email is fraudulent do not open, and do not click on any links within the email if you do. Legitimate emails will always give you the option to pick up the ecard by typing in the address of the Web site, rather than clicking on the link. All MSN Greetings emails provide this option.
• The individual sending the ecard should always be identifiable, such as in the subject line of the email itself. If you do not recognize the sender, be cautious. Be especially cautious of more generic subject lines.
• To ensure your safety, simply type in the address of the Web site and go directly to it to retrieve your greeting. At MSN Greetings you can bypass clicking on any links by going to the site and entering the code given to you in the email at the "ecard pickup" page on the site.
• How to tell the difference between good and bad emails
• Click here to view an example of a legitimate ecard email.
• Click here to view an example of a fraudulent ecard email.

Legitimate ecards with suspicious messaging: If you receive a legitimate ecard that contains a personal message and do not recognize the sender or if it contains website addresses close the ecard and report it to security at security@msn.americangreetings.com. If you do not recognize the sender do not type (or copy/paste) any website addresses into your browser.

What you can do to protect yourself from fraudulent ecard emails moving forward

If you feel that you have received a fraudulent ecard email claiming to be from MSN Greetings, please submit your example to security@msn.americangreetings.com to help in our investigations. Due to the magnitude of email to this inbox, you will not receive a response; however, you can be assured that your submission will help us continue to fight spam and phishing.

You can also file a complaint at the Internet Crime Complaint Center of the FBI.

Some additional recommendations to further protect you:

• Make sure to always use the latest version of your Internet browser, as they will check for potentially fraudulent websites when browsing the web.
• Save our known address to your safe senders list so that legitimate ecard messages are ensured to be delivered. This does not ensure that ecard scams do not get into your inbox, however.
• Please continue to be mindful of the above characteristics of our ecard emails versus the malicious emails and report any findings to security@msn.americangreetings.com.

How to tell the difference between good emails and bad emails

At a quick glance after reviewing the table below, you should be able to tell the difference between legitimate ecard email notifications and emails not from us. However, we still recommend that you manually type in www.msn.americangreetings.com after the http:// found in your Internet browser to view your ecard to ensure complete safety.

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Example of a legitimate MSN Greetings email

(Note: we also have pickup reminder emails sent to the recipient at a future date that may have different copy, but same general attributes as outlined above).

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Example of an email NOT from MSN Greetings

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