Lottery messaje... is just a trickery?

Question

I recieved a message from [e-mail]

Is it that I won something? Or is a tricky?

here a fragment of the message:

ONLINE NOTIFICATION OF WINNING

BRITISH LOTTERY officially bring to your notice the draw result of

february 2008

BRITISH LOTTERY-wheel E-game which was conducted at our international

corporate

office complex in The United Kingdom.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number .........with

serial number

....... drew lucky numbers 7-14-18-31-45, which consequently won in the

1ST

category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of

1,000,000.00Pounds (ONE MILLION POUNDS STERLING).CONGRATULATIONS!

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our

computerized email selection system(ess) from a database of over

250,000 email

addresses drawn from which your Email was selected.......

Is is real? I won something? How should I know? please be sincer.

.. thanks for answers!

Answer 1

This is a SCAM. Check out the below link for confirmation of various email scams, including the famous Yahoo/MSN lottery scams hitting the internet 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 2

Unless you actually entered a lottery you wouldn't be contacted.

How can you win something if you never entered it?  That would make it spam.

Answer 3

Its a scam, dont reply. If you dont by a ticket you will NOT win 1 million.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

It's as tricky as it gets.  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...

Answer 6

This is an Advance Fee Fraud type of scam. There is no lottery prize. Instead, you'll be asked to pay various "fees" to release the check. And that check will never show up. You'll just wire your money, usually by Western Union or Money Gram, to some scammer who will pick it up and enjoy it at your expense.

Whenever you receive an e-mail like this, ask yourself these questions.

"When did I buy a lottery ticket?" If you don't play, you can't win.

"When did the lottery commission begin notifying winners by e-mail?" How can the real lottery people know who to notify? Here, they don't know who holds the winning tickets until we come forward to claim the prize. There's no name, and definitely no e-mail address, associated with the lottery tickets that we buy.

If you still aren't sure that this is a scam, you can contact the real headquarters for the lottery. Use the telephone book to find the real number. Whatever the person who wrote the e-mail put into this message? Well...that will just direct you to his cell phone.

The best thing to do when you receive these lottery-scam e-mails is to delete them and forget all about them. Some people like to report the e-mail addresses to the providers, which has the e-mail accounts closed. That's not good because this particular scammer might be under investigation. Killing his e-mail address can wreck the investigation, which just isn't a good idea.

Answer 7

It's just spam, ignore and delete it. More than spam, it's a scam.

At some point if you reply they'll ask for money to cover some sort of costs, or very personal info which they'll then abuse.

If you search google for 'British Lottery' all the top hits are websites revealing it to be a scam.