Why is sending an electronic greeting card a bad idea?

Is it a bad idea to send a friend an electronic greeting card?The simple answer is `possibly.'Electronic greeting cards have the potential of spreading joy and cheer around the internet.However, as you will see by the end of this article, they could also cause some frustration and headaches.

Sending an electronic greeting card to a friend or family member seems like a great idea.It is simple and quick.An easy point and click at a free ecard service and you have now sent a cute virtual birthday card.There are many different types of ecards and they cover just about any occasion you can think of.Often they contain music, sounds or even animation.

Once again the saying `there is no free lunch' comes to mind.Why is the service free?Is there a hidden agenda?You will see some advertising on the pages you have to visit to sign up for the card.The receiver will also have to view some advertising.You probably don't mind these simple advertisements.However, you may end up being a victim of a more aggressive advertisement.

An advertising technique companies have become fond of using is SPAM.Spamming is the abuse of email to send unsolicited and undesired bulk messages.These messages are most often sent via email.

Spamming is very easy to do and very cheap because advertisers incur only a small cost of their mailing lists.Additionally, it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings.Because it is so cheap to do, many companies are involved and the volume of unsolicited mail has become very high.

The costs to deal with these mass mailings continue to mount as employees have to spend time sifting through worthless email and companies spend money and effort trying to block these emails.Additionally, the Internet Service Providers have had to increase their capacity to meet the volume from spammers.

The address of the recipient and maybe even the sender must be input into the website in order to send an electronic greeting.The site now has access to one or more legitimate email addresses.How certain are you that they are only going to use the address that you gave them to only send an electronic greeting?What is to keep them from sending advertisements or spam?Even worse what is to keep them from selling the email addresses to other sites that will then send you and your friend more spam?Have you just voluntarily signed you and your friend up for unwanted emails?

Many other sites offer to send articles for on your behalf.If you visit an online newspaper, often they will ask if you would like to forward the article to somebody.If you do, you have just given that person's email address to them and they could do many things with it.Often they post a privacy policy, but how do you know it will be followed?People who send spam are not worried about their reputation.

How do you deal with this issue?

Reputable Sources.
Only deal with reputable sources.People that have a reputation to maintain are more likely to respect your privacy and listen to your concerns.Hallmark or other large companies will work harder to maintain their good image than a company that was set up yesterday and all they do is service free emails.If you haven't heard of the company, think twice before giving them your friend's email.

Make the ecard.
The electronic ecards are fairly simple.You could put a little thought and effort into writing the card and finding some decent graphics.This won't put your friend's email in jeopardy and it shows that you put some thought into the card.

Purchase a program.
You can purchase a program that creates the cards.Now you can send the card directly.Your friend's email address is never shown to a third party.

`Real card'
Send an old snail mail card with a stamp.You will probably agree that sending a card through the mail shows a little more thought that clicking on a few sites.A card must be picked out, purchased, signed, and mailed days ahead of the even to make sure it is received on time.