Sending e-cards for Christmas and New Year is a popular practice among internet users,

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but beware of opening those from people you don’t know. It could be a virus intended to steal your information.

With the beginning of the holiday season since October, computer security major Symantec has begun witnessing such attacks not only in India, but across the globe. In a recent phishing attack, a URL for an animated e-card is provided in the message. When the user clicks it, an animated video is played in a flash player and the personal message section is invaded by a typical phishing message.

Gaurav Kanwal, country sales manager, India, consumer products and solutions, Symantec said, “When we analysed spam data from the past few years, we observed that holiday seasons spirit up malware spam campaigns using e-cards, video player downloads or ActiveX download attacks. We have found that greeting card or e-card spam are the most common. When analysing spam messages from the Symantec Probe Network this year, we came across an interesting phishing attack where spammers are misrepresenting e-card services.”

Users tend to open the e-cards without paying attention to the message body, he said, advising users to be extra careful with these messages so that their personal information is not jeopardised.

In the last few years, cyber criminals have increasingly taken advantage of the festive seasons of Christmas/New Year. Viruses or malware used earlier and running parallel to the holiday season include Santa IM Worm, Merry Christmas, Father Christmas, and worms masked as Hallmark e-cards, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola holiday promotions.

“Cyber criminals use their best schemes during the holidays to steal people’s money, credit card information, social security number and identity,” said Jeff Green, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “These thieves follow seasonal trends and create holiday-related websites, scams and other convincing e-mails that can trick even the most cautious users.”

McAfee has now come out with its list “Twelve Scams of Christmas” — which lists the twelve most dangerous online scams that computer users should be cautious of this holiday season. There are charity phishing scams that hackers use to take advantage of a citizen’s generosity by sending e-mails that appear to be from legitimate charitable organisations.

Routine forms of fraudulent mails include, fake invoice from delivery services to steal your money, social networking, holiday e-cards, holiday-themed power point attachments, luxury holiday campaigns that lead shoppers to malware-ridden sites offering ‘discounted’ luxury gifts from Cartier, Gucci, and Tag Heuer, online shopping deals, websites where users can download Christmas Carol lyrics, ringtones or wallpapers, auction websites and email banking scams.

According to Consumer Reports’ 2009 State of the Net Survey, cyber criminals have milked $8 billion from consumers in the past two years.