It’s spam. It’s phishing. It’s bullshit and potentially dangerous.
And it also seems to be more clever than the run of the mill spam and phishing trash that’s out there today, flooding our inboxes and spam filters. You know…
Stuff like this is easy to spot as spam and trash, even when the odd one slips through and ends up in my inbox instead of the spam filter. Lots of emojis, a gazillion different fonts and “clever” misspellings to try to get through the spam filters, all trying to get you to click on a deal that’s just too good to be true or a mindless threat to catch the unwary.
But these!
- Since it WAS my birthday and…
- Since both folks mentioned by name (the image cuts off their last names in order to protect their privacy) WERE friends of mine and…
- Since I DID get other email greetings and e-cards from other friends this weekend…
…it seemed quite plausible that there was a new app folks were using and it just was being incorrectly flagged as spam! I could have mistakenly clicked on either of these!
Except for one teeny, tiny little detail.
Both of the friends mentioned are deceased and have been for a while.
Maybe I got “lucky” in that the clever little bot in question picked two friends at random (I’m assuming it scraped my friends list and my birthday from Facebook) who were highly unlikely to be sending me birthday greetings from the Great Beyond. Maybe you won’t be so lucky.
So, beware the “BirthdayApp” spam. It’s working hard to try to fool you. I don’t know exactly what it does to you if it gets you to click on it, but I really hope you don’t find out the hard way.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 
Thanks for this helpful information. It just happened that the friend who suppossedly sent me a birthday card is also deceased! That’s exactly what triggered my suspicion, as well. So, it’s clear that the bot is somehow using this kind of profiles (most probably facebook ones) to do their scam.
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