Ah, those spammers and scammers never give up, do they? I just got
another scam email today telling me I'd won 300,000 euros in a lottery
of Internet users. Here's the letter:
E.U LOTTERY ONLINE. LOTTERY AND
GAMING CORPORATION,
MONTH OF APRIL LOTTERY,
WINNING NUMBER:
FLO-06315369
DEAR WINNER,
YOU WON THE SUM OF (THREE HUNDRED
THOUSAND EUROS) FROM E. U LOTTERY AND GAMING CORPORATION. THE WINNING TICKET
WAS SELECTED FROM A DATA BASE OF INTERNET E-MAIL USERS, WHICH YOUR E-MAIL
ADDRESS WAS ONE OF THE WINNER OF THE PRIZE AMOUNT,
WE THEREBY CONTACT
YOU TO CLAIM YOUR WINNING AMOUNT QUICKLY AS THIS IS A MONTHLY LOTTERY.
FAILURE TO CLAIM YOUR WIN WILL RESULT INTO THE REVERSION OF THE WINNING SUM
TO OUR FOLLOWING MONTH LOTTERY. PLEASE CONTACT OUR APPROVED AGENT FOR THE
CLAIM AND TRANSFER OF YOUR WINNING PRIZE TO YOUR NOMINATED
ACCOUNT.
E. U LOTTERY ONLINE AGENCY. MISS. LILLIAN MORGAN.
DIRECTOR OF WINNING CLAIMS DEPARTMENT. TEL: 31-623-868-256 Fax-
+31-84-757-0390 Email:
REGARDS, MR.
MARK PINTO. DIRECTOR OF E. U LOTTERY ONLINE.
If
you're not looking at this and already saying to yourself that this is
obviously a scam, let's take a closer look at it, shall we? Here's
what we see in a very cursory scan:
As is typical of spam and scam emails, the return address on this message ("
") doesn't match up to the address they want me to use to contact them ("
").
The address they want me to use is a free Netscape email address, which
seems very dubious for any kind of business to use to contact someone.
Next, this thing is done almost entirely in capital letters.
I've never received a professional email that is all caps, so that
makes me pretty suspicious of this already. The line breaks are also
in weird places, which looks highly unprofessional.
A quick Google search of "Mr. Mark Pinto" shows that a LOT of
people have gotten these emails, word for word. If this is really a
lottery, you'd think there wouldn't be that many winners out there.
A Google search of the "
" address
turns up that this is an address blacklisted by anti-Spam software.
This, by itself, should be reason enough for you to doubt that the
message is genuine.
Then, of course, there's the question "If this is a real
lottery, what is this company getting from me?" For instance, you play
your state lottery, your state got money from you in exchange for a
chance to win more money. In a contest sponsored by a major
corporation, you've usually had to look at advertising, agree to
receive some promotional email, watch a video, etc., to be entered.
These guys are claiming you won simply because you're an Internet
user. Does that seem even remotely likely?
Last, but not least, I looked up "www.virgilo.it", the site
where our Mr. Pinto's return address is allegedly located. It's an
Internet portal site, in Italian, which looks to me like another free
email provider. If this contest collects enough money to be able to
give out 300,000 euros a month, you'd think they could afford their own
email server so that they and their agents could use a REAL return
address.
Any one of the above signals ought to be enough to
tell us this is a scam. Together, they should be setting off loud
sirens and flashing lights in our head saying "STEER CLEAR!"
