I recieved an email from yahoo/msn lottery Inc. saying that i was one of five lucky winners,it's a scam right?

Question

The email asked me for my address and some other personal info. I was asked to email the info to some guy named Baldric Beavis, he's the events manager. I have a gut feeling that this a stupid scam.

Answer 1

I'm sorry to tell you that the e-mail you received is a scam. The message sounds too good to be true because it is. There is no such thing as the Yahoo! Lottery. The same goes for MSN, Toyota, AOL, Coca-Cola, et cetera. None of these companies are giving away money to random Internet users.

Rather, scammers are collecting e-mail addresses from all over the Internet and bombarding them with these fake e-mails. If you reply to this scam e-mail, the con artist will soon ask you for money. There are many excuses for why the scammer wants money, but they're all lies.

Many scammers will tell you that you need to wire them money to cover "courier fees." When you do this, the scammer will come back soon to ask for more money. This will continue until you are either broke or wise to the scam. Either way, you have lost your money - and there will not be a lottery prize to collect at the end of this mess, either.

Some scammers will even go so far as to provide you with documents as "proof" that they are trustworthy. You might receive a scanned copy of a passport as identification. This is either fake or stolen. Seeing an ID proves nothing. And anybody with MS Paint and five minutes of free time can forge confirmation papers, lists of winners, or other such documents to convince victims that the lottery winnings are real. The scammers will try to make their cons look as genuine as possible so as to extract your money from you.

You can confirm that you've received a scam e-mail by doing one or more of these things:

* Open the company's official Web site in a fresh browser window. Yahoo!, MSN, et cetera will not have any information on their Web sites about their lottery drawings or giveaways. This is because these companies are not really giving away money. At the most, you might find a fraud warning on these official Web sites. This is an excellent indication that you're being scammed, as companies that *are* giving away money will promote this fact all over the place.

* Copy part of the e-mail and paste that into a search engine. Many known scam e-mails are collected and published at various anti-scam Web sites. These pages are there to help spread the word about these scams so that fewer people will fall for them. Use these free tools to your advantage: search parts of any suspicious e-mail you receive before you reply.

* Contact your local law-enforcement department. More often than not, somebody there is familiar enough with this widespread scam to confirm that it is not real.

You should delete the scam e-mail and forget about it. If you have not actually lost money to the scammer, you do not have a case for law enforcement to investigate. They're busy trying to catch the scammers who have stolen from actual victims. Reporting the scammer's e-mail account to the provider to have the box closed might seem like a good idea, but this can ruin an active law-enforcement investigation.

You can also warn people you know about these scams. The more people we all tell, the fewer potential victims these low-life scammers will have.

http://www.scamwarners.com is an excellent Web site for more information about fake lottery scams and other, similar cons.

Answer 2

YES IT IS. Never fall for those scams they are always too good to be true.

Answer 3

It's the scammiest of scams. You receive an unsolicited email, which states that you have won a major prize in an international lottery. Supposedly, your email address was collected online and attached to a random number that was subsequently entered in a draw for the lottery. In order to claim your prize, you are instructed to contact the official "agent" in charge of your case. You are also advised to keep the win confidential for "security reasons". This part of the scam is basically a random phishing expedition. If you respond in any way to the email, the scammers will send further messages or even contact you by phone in an attempt to draw you deeper into the scam.

You may be asked to provide banking details, a large amount of personal information, and copies of your driver's license and passport. Ostensibly, these requests are to prove your identity and facilitate the transfer of your winnings. However, if you comply with these requests, the scammers will have enough information to steal your identity.

Sooner or later, the scammers will request some sort of advance fee supposedly to cover administration, legal or delivery costs. At its core, this scam is just a reworking of the Nigerian loan fraud, in which scammers also eventually ask for upfront fees to facilitate the "deal". Like Nigerian scams, victims who do actually pay the requested fees will probably find that they receive continuing payment demands to cover "unexpected expenses". The requests for money will go on until the victim realizes what is happening or has no further money to send.

In some cases, the scammers give victims the option of opening an account at a particular bank as an alternative to paying upfront fees. However, this "bank" which is completely bogus, will insist on an initial deposit of $3000 as a requirement for opening the account. The fake bank will have a legitimate looking website to reinforce the scam. In other cases, the victim is given the option of travelling to an overseas destination and paying a cash fee to facilitate the release of the funds. However, any "winnings" released to the victim will be counterfeit and therefore worthless.

The details of the lottery scams vary regularly with regard to the name of the lottery itself, the country of origin, the sponsoring organization, the amount of the "prize" and other particulars. The scammers try to add a patina of legitimacy to their claims by mentioning real financial institutions, government departments or well-known companies. They may also provide links to slick looking, but fraudulent websites that are designed to back up information included in the scam emails. If the scammers are successful in establishing a dialogue with a potential victim, they may provide "proof" such as a scanned image of a supposed government official's ID and even photographs of the "winnings" in cash.

Complete list of SCAM e-mail addresses.

http://www.419baiter.com/_scam_emails/sc...

For a list of legitimate online casinos and sportsbooks, check out:

http://www.online-gambling-made-easy.com

Answer 4

Your gut instinct is correct.  This is a SCAM. The below links confirm many email scams hitting the internet, including the famous Yahoo/MSN lottery scams and how to report them :

http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/lo...

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/or...

Unscrupulous thieves have sent you this email and they are trying to part you from your hard earned cash. They will often ask you to call a premium rate number and keep you holding on whilst you rack up a huge phone bill. They are then paid a large proportion of this phone bill. They may ask you to divulge personal information about yourself or ask for your bank or credit card details. Do not divulge any such information under any circumstances. It is surprising how many innocent victims have been duped by these types of emails. Just remember the thieves who send them are very clever and extremely convincing. I suggest you delete the email and send it into cyberspace, hopefully along with the thieving scumbags who send them.

Check out these sites for further information :

http://www.scambusters.com

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

Answer 5

Sorry friend but there is no Microsoft, Yahoo or other e-mail lottery, it's a scam do not answer do not give personal information.The following sites give more information

http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/nigeri...

http://www.thescambaiter.com/forum/showt...

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/email-lottery...

.Also If you go to the following site you will get some info on ID theft www.identity-theft.org.uk the iinternet is safe enough if you are careful but please answer nothing that you are doubtful about.Good Luck and be careful