14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo have not teamed up for a lottery. However, a new lottery scam that’s currently making the rounds online claims they have.
The emails identified by Hoax Slayer inform recipients that they’ve won a large amount of money. They read something like this:
“Dear Winner. Your email addresses have just won MICROSOFT in CONJUNCTION WITH FACEBOOK/YAHOO & WINDOWS LIVE AWARD! Prize money of £650,000.00 (six hundred & fifty thousand great british pounds) award winners emerge through random selection of all active email subscribers and Facebook online users.”
Recipients are instructed to respond to the emails with their personal details.
To make everything more legitimate looking, the notification bears the logos of these companies. In addition, they contain the pictures of Mark Zuckerberg and a couple of individuals who are allegedly the “lottery board director” and the “admin secretary.”
Of course, Facebook doesn’t have an award “creating hope and support to Internet users.” Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook have nothing to do with the lottery emails. Instead, scammers are hoping they can convince unsuspecting users to hand over their personal information and various amounts of money.
Those who respond to the bogus notifications are instructed to pay certain fees in order to get the prize money. In such scams, the fraudsters usually push for more money until the victims finally realize there’s no prize.
At that point, in most cases, the money is lost for good.
In case you come across such emails, simply ignore them. Companies such as Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft might have a lot of money. However, they’re not going to give it out to random users as part of a lottery.
Remember two things: you can’t win in a lottery you haven’t entered and if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.