You’ve just learnt you have it! The next thing on your mind is that wonderful night you spent with that special girl and bang! It hits you. How are you going to tell her that you have tested positive for Chlamydia? Your brain is on fire looking for solutions, but none of them fits you. Meeting her again to break the news? Call her and tell her: Hey, look you have to get tested too. Send her a text message?

Since you don’t know what to do, maybe you should know that there is a solution for your problem: a free Web site, inSpot.org, that allows users to anonymously notify their partners to get tested for STDs such as HIV, gonorrhea, Chlamydia and syphilis. The initiative belonged to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and nonprofit Internet Sexuality Information services (ISIS) in 2004 as a way to prevent STDs. The project followed a survey in which 73 percent of respondents said they would inform casual partners if there were a convenient and anonymous way to do so.

“When you weigh the importance of getting people notified, that's ultimately what needs to be done. By notifying them -- even if it's done anonymously, even distantly, even with an e-card -- the benefits of getting someone diagnosed and treated outweigh the concerns of insensitivity,” said Jeffrey D. Klausner, director of STD Prevention and Control Services in San Francisco, California's Department of Public Health.

According to a report in the journal PLoS Medicine this week, since 2004, more than 50,000 e-cards have been sent out to encourage people get tested for an STD. In 2006 and 2007, e-cards were sent because of the following STDs: 15.4 percent were sent for gonorrhea, 14.9 percent for syphilis, 11.6 percent for Chlamydia, 9.3 percent for HIV, 48.8 percent for other STDs (trichomoniasis, viral hepatitis, pubic lice, or “crabs”). More than 750 people visit the site daily, and more than 30,000 people have sent e-cards since the site’s launch.

The number is encouraging but there is still more to be done, considering the high number of STDs diagnosed annually in the United Stated. There are 19 million new STD cases including 900,000 cases of Chlamydia, 330,000 cases of gonorrhea and 55,400 estimated new HIV infections.

The Web site “was never intended to replace traditional partner notification by public health investigators.” However, “it has emerged as a complement to those services,” the report reads.

Of course, Web site’s creators feared some people would send the e-cards maliciously, but fewer than 10 recipients have reported receiving a card in error.

The service is now available in Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, Ore., and several other US cities, but ISIS says it is coordinating efforts to make the service available in all 50 states.