Symantec says the lottery scam is making the rounds in central Europe, fooling many users out of their money

Apr 19, 2013 20:51 GMT  ·  By

Symantec has issued an alert to warn mobile phone users about a lottery scam that’s currently making the rounds, particularly in central Europe.

The spam messages read something like this: “Your mobile number was selected as a winner of £2.000000.00 with Winning No 03 11 13 20 21 34 35. Email [email address] for claims.”

Of course, this isn’t a real lottery, but another advance fee scam. Those who respond to the messages are likely asked to provide some personal information and possibly even a certain amount of money that’s supposedly needed to transfer the prize.

In case you’re wondering how the scammers got your phone number, Symantec says there are several possibilities.

The con artists might be sending out the messages to random numbers. On the other hand, they might have obtained it with the aid of a malware that infected your device or the one of a friend.

There’s also the possibility that they’ve got it after breaching one of the services you’ve subscribed to, or by simply acquiring a large batch of real phone numbers from one of the shady hacker forums that reside on the Dark Web.

In any case, be sure to ignore such messages, since nothing good can come out of replying to them.