14 DAY TRIAL // We've seen it in the past and we see it again: a spam email which informs me that I have won the grand prize, which by the way means no less than 1 million pounds, at the UK National Lottery arrived in my Gmail inbox although it should be redirected in the spam folder. However, Gmail's mistake may be excusable since the email seems to be sent from a legitimate email address. But what's really interesting is that the sender's email address is actually provided by Singapore Telecommunications, the largest telecommunications company in Singapore.
I highly doubt that such a famous company would send spam messages over the web, so either the email account got compromised or it has been used for spamming purposes with the help of Trojan horses or other infections. However, having a look in the headers of the email points to the "reply to" section, which actually contains a Google email address which confirms the fact that it's a fake.
"We are pleased to inform you today 13th April 2008 of the result of the winners of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY ONLINE PROMO PROGRAMME, held on April 2008 .You won the sum of ?1 000,000.00 GBP," the email body reads.
As expected, the email asks you to send additional info to another email address, including details such as your full name, the full address, the marital status, occupation, age, sex, nationality, country of residence and telephone number. Receivers of the emails are encouraged to send these details to a non-Gmail email address and hosted by a domain registered on April 13, 2008. This means the domain was bought 3 days ago, probably for spamming reasons. However, it seems like the spammer hopes that receivers will hit the reply button instead of sending the info the included email, in order to redirect the information to the Gmail account specified in the "reply-to" section.
So, another lottery scam reaches the inbox. For those of you who don't know, Google even released a public notification some time ago, denying some potential Google lottery prizes which arrived in lots of Gmail users' inboxes. "Google doesn't send unsolicited email, and we don't permit others to send unsolicited email through our mail servers. A number of unscrupulous businesses have sent out mass mailings that appear to be related to Google. We're actively pursuing all available legal means to stop these miscreants from abusing our name and your inbox," Google stated.