Although the first reported email is affirmed to be a hoax by Snopes, it must be noted that a very few months ago there were some emails with "click to receive your card" that claimed to be from Hallmark and the link directed you to a URL that looked like a Hallmark Card site, but wasn't.

The purpose of that scam was to download a small "bot" when you clicked to see your card at the site. The bot would then call home later to download other malware that allowed the "botmaster" to take over control of your machine to send junk and/or to propogate the same bot to others.

That site was shut down quite quickly (according to Hallmark), and the email described above has been circulating literally for years and may be assumed to be unrelated to the real one; but the threat still exists that anything you receive that contains a link - especially if it's unexpected, even if "from a friend" - has the potential to take you to places where you will not enjoy the party.

I'm unable to convince "other members of the household" that click/cut/paste smartass cutesies are unmitigated CRAP and should never be "clicked." My own preferred procedure is to email the purported sender to "thank them for their card," and pointedly to inform them that I don't click on that sort of stuff so they need to tell me what it looked like.

(If it's a real friend, and if they confirm that they did send it, I may promise - in a second email - to look at it later. I may or may not actually look, depending on just what "favors" are promised.)

Of course I have so few friends (who might do that sort of thing) that I don't have to send many such emails.

John