Yahoo's Comment on the Lottery Contest: FAKE!

Some time ago, I wrote an article about a new spam campaign affecting the Yahoo accounts that informed the users about a special Yahoo Lottery involving some very attractive prizes. Obviously, it was only a fake message although some of the users might believe that they are very lucky because they won such big prizes. The best way to stop this campaign was to mark the emails as spam using the in-built features of Yahoo Mail. The parent company didn't publish any statement but instead of this, it created a special category on the help manuals to inform the users about the fake messages.

"There is no Yahoo! Lottery, and we would never send you information about a contest you never entered," the message begins. "That's the definition of unsolicited: you never asked for it. It showed up out of nowhere. The message probably also displays two other hallmarks of fraud emails: it appears to be official (with company logos, even links), and it demands urgent action "to claim your prize", or something similar."

In addition, the Sunnyvale company provides a simple way to deal with these spam messages. All you need to do is forward the emails to a special Yahoo mail account that will analyze it in order to block it or suspend the account.

"If you've received a message like "Final Notification: Yahoo! Mail Winner!" or "Your Email Address Has Won $XX million", it's a scam. Don't reply to the email, don't click on any links in it, and never divulge any personal information. Yahoo! Mail will never request personal information in an unsolicited email," the message continues.

"If you get an email that looks like it's from Yahoo! but tells you you're the winner of a Yahoo! Lottery or other contest - and it asks you to email personal information to claim a cash prize or reward - click Spam to dispose of it. You can also forward the suspicious email to this address."