Have you received an email that begins something like this?

Good day.

Your family member has sent you an ecard from "some-odd-address.com.hk".

Send free ecards from some-odd-address.com.hk with your choice of colors, words and music.

Your ecard will be available with us for the next 30 days. If you
wish to keep the ecard longer, you may save it on your computer or
take a print.

To view your ecard, choose from any of the following options:

If you have, delete it, it’s malware spam, phishing bait, in other words. There is no ecard waiting for you, but there is a nasty infectious surprise on the site should you click one of those options rather than ignore the message. This is one way in which your computer may be hijacked by spammers and rogue programmers who will turn it into a computer zombie, sending out millions of spam messages, viruses, or worms.

The first clue that there is something awry is that phrase “Your family member”. Well, I’ve got lost of family members not just one, a legitimate site would more likely say “Your relative or friend” rather than that phrase and more likely than not would actually name said friend of family member.

I’ve received at least one a day of this kind of spam email for the past month, usually it’s “family member”, sometimes it’s “a partner” (implying that you may have more than one), occasionally it is addressed from “you friend”, “an neighbor”, and “your school friends”.

Similar attempts to make you click malicious links may arrive from your bank, ebay, paypal, etc, never click a URL in an email that claims to point to your bank account, it is almost certainly a phish. More recently messages claiming to come from Microsoft that ask you to “Reset your Windows Live password” may look legitimate, but they are not. Don’t be tempted to follow their instructions, you could be duped into revealing passwords to a malicious third party or loading a hidden trojan application.

Be warned. Trust no one, especially not “your family member” in the singular and certainly not someone who cannot spell calling from Microsoft.

By the way, this post was written before the appearance of this item on the Security Fix site, but you might wish to check out that post too for additional information and other security hints.