Over the weekend I received an interesting scam email, claiming that I'd
won a new Honda Accord and a half-million dollars in a contest Honda had
sponsored. It was quite obviously a fake, but I'm concerned that some
people could fall for it. If so, I'm hoping you do a web search and
find this article on my blog.
Before I explain how I know it's a fake and a scam, I'll share the
contents of the message here...
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
From: <
>
Subject: [PMX:SPAM] HONDA CAR LOTTERY
(HEADQUARTERS)
HONDA CAR LOTTERY (HEADQUARTERS) An Affiliate of
Honda UK. 28 TANFIELD ROAD, CROYDON, LONDON FROM: HONDA COMPANY UK.
ATTENTION: WINNER! TICKET NUMBER: 2752246896 SERIAL NUMBER: 652-662
BATCH NUMBER : AT-040SB06-03 AWARD FINAL NOTIFICATION We are pleased to
inform you of the release of the long awaited results of the HONDA CAR
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTION PROGRAM held on the 1 april,2006.You were
entered as dependent clients with; Reference Serial Number:652-662 and
Batch number AT-040SB06-03. Your email address attached to the ticket
number: 2752246896 that drew the lucky winning number, which
consequently won the sweepstake in the second category, in four parts.
You have been approved for a payment of 500,000.00 US DOLLARS (FIVE
HUNDRED THOUSAND US$ DOLLARS) in cash credited to file reference number:
IPL/4249859609/WP1.This is from a total cash prize of FIVE MILLION US$
DOLLARS shared among the ten international winners in second categories,
along with a BRAND NEW HONDA ACCORD CAR (2005 model). Congratulations!
All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn
from 50,000 (Fifty thousand) names of email users around the world, as
part of our international promotion program. Due to mixed up of some
names and addresses, we ask that you keep this award personal, tillyour
claims has been processed and your funds remitted to you. This is part
of our security measures to avoid double claiming or unwarranted taking
advantage of the situation by other participants or impersonators. You
are contact our accredited agent for your claim. Name: Mr. BENSON.
E-mail:
HONDA CLAIMING SECURITY AGENCY. He is
your agent, and responsible for the processing and transfer of your
winnings to you. YOUR SECURITY FILE NUMBER IS W-91237-H67/B4 (keep
personal).Remember, your winning must be claimed not later than (31th
March 2006). You are required to forward the following details to help
facilitate the processing of -snipped from here on-
This message displays some obvious signs that it's a fake, so let's
start with those:
First, the fact that this message wasn't sent directly to me at my
email address raises a red flag. If they were sending out a contest
win announcement for something of this size, I'm pretty sure they'd be
individual messages - especially for a company with the clout and
finances of Honda.
Notice the return address ("
"). This
isn't a Honda mailing address. In fact, typing "www.net.mx" in the
Address box of your browser will (as of the moment I write this) get
you a "We can't find www.mx.net" message from the browser. That should
be a HUGE tip-off.
This sentence contains grammatical errors: "Due to mixed up of some
names and addresses, we ask that you keep this award personal,
tillyour claims has been processed and your funds remitted to you."
Again, a company as large and reputable as Honda would be unlikely to
make such large and basic mistakes. The two sentences which follow it
also contain grammatical errors, further underscoring this
observation.
Now, compare the address they want you to reply to
("
"). First, this is very different from the
address that sent the message. That should raise a red flag for you.
Why would the message come from one domain (the part after the "@"
sign in the return address is "universal.net.mx") while they're having
you contact someone at another domain ("yahoo.com")? Answer: Most
likely they wouldn't. A real message would very likely come directly
from "honda.com" and direct you to someone at "honda.com".
For that matter, the very fact that for an "official" Honda contest
the reply address is "yahoo.com" (a free email account service and not
a Honda corporate email address) is a MASSIVE tip-off that this is a
fake. Again, Honda is a big enough company to be able to give a
"honda.com" email address to employees and agents without the need to
have you emailing a Yahoo account.
Last, the letter claims that Honda wants to "avoid double claiming or
unwarranted taking advantage of the situation", implying that if other
people pretend to be winners Honda won't know the difference. Honda's
not stupid, folks. If their contest went this badly awry, they'd
declare the results invalid and start over. They wouldn't risk handing
out a half-million dollars to anyone who asked for it.
If you were uninformed enough to respond to this message, you will very
likely find yourself in trouble soon. If the information requested at
the end of the message isn't by itself enough to commit identity theft
against you, it's enough to open to door to the scammer getting you to
cough up some money. The scammer will most likely contact you and tell
you that there's some "fee" you have to pay him to validate your entry
in the "lottery", that it's not paid by Honda... or he'll have some
other excuse that requires you to wire him some money. A real,
legitimate contest will NEVER do this. If you weren't tipped off by the
many blatant clues in the message, the request for money should set off
loud alarm sirens in your head.
In summary, this is a scam, a hoax, a fraud, a sham, or whatever word
you use to describe something that's not real or legitimate. Don't
fall for it! Gullible people keep these scammers in business. If no one
falls for this, they're going to stop doing it eventually. But so long
as even one person is drawn in by the lure of free stuff, the scammers
will continue to make a living ripping off the rest of us.
