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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I just received a number of these emails on my birthday ‘…sent you a birthday card’.
First issue: you have to create an account to actually view the card.
Second issue: after a trial period, you have to pay a monthly fee to keep the account.
Third issue: it gave me a list of contacts I could send cards to; some whom I had had no contact with in years, and several whose names are unfamiliar.
So no, I won’t even bother to look at the cards and will try to get my name off their list.
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OK, so this happened to me as it was birthday last week. Initially, I ignored the first email, but when a second email arrived saying I had another card from another friend, I thought I should check it out. I clicked through and signed up for the ‘first 30 days free’ (then £15.99 every 3 months) thinking I’d just cancel it immediately…
But now I can’t find any option or details to cancel this subscription!! I’ll phone the credit card company now. Is there anything else I can/should do?
I feel very stupid. I’m normally alert to scams, but I was totally hoodwinked because it was allegedly from friends I’d not heard from for a while. 😦
Be careful out there!
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I’m sorry you got bitten by this one, Toby. I wrote this last year, but just had my birthday this year and again got two of these emails. Again, “fortunately” for me, from high school classmates who are deceased, so I wasn’t tempted to reply. Good luck working with your credit card company to block the charges, I hope that works!
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just got a couple of these emails and first thought was to Google it as it seemed off. Glad this was first thing that came up.
flagged email and reported it.
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just got a few of these emails. It seemed less like the usual spam but was still unusual. but I just googled and this was first result. So glad you posted this. Reported and trashed them.
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did any one work out how to cancel subscription
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