As if the slutbot didn’t give us enough to worry about, spammers and other net-baddies are ramping up their use of holiday e-cards to distribute malware, according to the Christian Science Monitor. “While malicious e-cards are not a new problem,” says the Monitor, “their numbers have grown, their tactics have improved, and their victims are still falling for it.”

It gives a couple examples of this year’s ploys:

One suspicious e-card crawling the Web this year tries to exploit users’ feistier side. When opened, the e-mail loads an image of a rascal throwing a snowball at your screen. “You have just been hit with an e-mail snowball!” reads the card, which Symantec included in its December spam report. The card tells readers to forward it on to friends and share the fun … “Each time the e-mail is read, a request is sent to the server hosting the image, and the user’s e-mail address is stored … on the spammer’s server,” says the Symantec report. So, next time the spammer wants to send out junk mail, he has a fresh list of addresses.

Another of this year’s crop put a professional polish on an old trick. The card used Hallmark’s official logo and a convincing e-card template to hide its intentions. All the links led to Hallmark.com, except the line “To see it, click here.” That link would download a program onto your computer that unlocks the PC to hackers.

In my mind I have an image of the Grinch sitting in his icy hovel tapping at his keyboard, that big, diabolical grin spreading across his face.