Congratulations! You've Won 10,000 Lottery Spam Emails!

Ten or fifteen years ago, we didn't need any fancy anti spam software, we got most of our lottery scams by snail mail. If all that dead paper was not so bad for the environment, I might wish we still did; because the lottery spam that sneaks past my anti spam filter and into my inbox is the pits. At least those Publisher's Clearing House "You have Already Won!" letters used to be sort of entertaining. They were brightly colored, and even came with fun stickers you could play with or give to your kids. I always enjoyed sticking that big "NO" stop sign sticker you know, the one intended for those who did not include a magazine subscription with their entry on the back of my brother's head. It was a much more innocent time.

Today's lottery spam is pretty similar to its low-tech cousin. It begins with that all-exciting email: You've won! or, if they're going for a business like tone, "Regarding Ticket Number 127289-56-8938." When you click to open it, hands shaking in excitement, you read:

We at EuroLotto are happy to announce that you are one of the winners of our recent Euro-Asian International Lottery draw, held on 24 June, 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden. Your email address was attached to an entry ticket numbered 123289-56-8938, which is being awarded a prize in the Third Category, in the amount of $1,000,000.

At which point you break out the champagne, hug your husband or wife, and promptly follow the instructions given. You have to pay $500 for processing fees in order to get your prize? Who cares! You're a millionaire!

Dealing with Lottery Spam

You don't actually do any of that, do you? You're smart enough to see the lottery spam that sneaks past your anti-spam filter for what it is: a cheap scam that plays upon our most sacred desires, namely, money. But while you're probably pretty adept at recognizing most lottery spam ("send to me email for to claim your money" is a pretty obvious indicator, after all), with the bazillion versions of this email out there, there are still a few that might catch you off guard.

Has a "Congratulations, you've won!" email sneaked past your server's anti spam software? First, keep this in mind: if you haven't bought a ticket for something, you can't have won anything. Traditional lotteries work when people buy tickets in order to be entered in a drawing for a pool of money. But if nobody buys, where does the pool of money come from? A fifth dimension that's brimming over with money trees? Probably not.

Remember this: nobody gives anything away for free.

You can also identify lottery spam by examining the email. What kind of email address did the email come from? If it's a free Yahoo or Hotmail address, you can guarantee that it's spam; reputable companies do not use free email providers. It's also spam if it mentions fees anywhere in the email, or requires you to give personal details.

So you've used your highly evolved powers of deduction to determine that a particular email is lottery spam. You've put away the champagne glasses and put down your checkbook. What's next? Generally, you should just delete the message. Never reply to it, as this will tell spammers that they've hit upon a valid email, and you'll be overrun with spam. But there is one more thing you can do if you'd like to be a good Samaritan.

While lottery scammers work hard to sneak past even the best anti spam programs, they also depend upon their victims' ability to email them back in order to 'obtain their winnings' (spam-speak for 'get scammed'). If you report any lottery spam to the free email provider from which it originated, the email provider can pull their account. Try it; it'll feel great to do your part to stop (or at least slow down) a lottery spam operation; sort of like an anti spam superhero.

Then you really should break out the champagne: you will have earned it.

Seed Newsvine

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