14 DAY TRIAL // Another classic lottery scam was presented to us by Graham Cluley, this time the large amount of money being offered by the BBC Lottery, which apparently chooses winners by their email address. Many of you might think that no one falls for these old scams, but you would be very surprised to see that people still take the bait when it comes to winning big.
Those who actually have tickets to the raffle might think that this is the way they are announced by the network, while others might be naïve enough to think that they can win without ever actually participating.
Because technology is so involved in all sorts of competitions some tend to wonder if they didn't really win, even if deep down they know it's all a scam.
I'm going to highlight a few of the mistakes made in the email that could confirm all this just part of a hoax.
While the header of the message might be real, you can always crosscheck the information with the one on the sender company's official website. Hackers often tend to write these things in a hurry and they make a lot of mistakes which would not be present in a legal, official note coming from a TV station.
The second thing that indicates the whole thing is a scam is the text announcing you're a winner. Punctuation marks are missing and the whole way the thing is written is a bit suspicious.
Even if you don't watch a lot of television you can make sure the details in the announcement are correct.
As Cluley highlights, the character's names involved are mistyped and the presenter of the lottery show is not actually Jenny Falconer. These things can be easily proven by taking a quick look at the BBC website.
The final thing that unmasks this spam campaign is the email address where the victim should send his information “for the processing of his claims.” [email protected] certainly doesn't belong to BBC and the fact that the sweepstakes involves participants from all over the world is also a clear sign that something's fishy.