14 DAY TRIAL // Gaelic-speaking Internet users are advised to be on the lookout for bogus Facebook lottery emails that are currently making the rounds.
Brian Honan, the founder and head of Ireland’s CSIRT (IRISS-CERT), has provided us with a sample of the scam email. The fake notifications appear to come from “Facebook Promotion Award” and they’re entitled “Comhghairdeas!” (the Gaeilge word for “congratulations”).
The messages inform recipients that they’ve won a lot of money in a lottery promotion sponsored by Facebook and Microsoft. The scammers tell potential victims that their name has been selected by Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Recipients are instructed to send an email to [email protected] “before the end of working hours” in order to claim the prize.
It’s likely that after users respond to the email, they’re asked to provide some personal information, and pay certain fees that are allegedly needed to get the prize.
We’ve covered a similar scam back in January 2012, when the scammers were trying to trick Irish users into thinking that they had won in the Spanish “El Gordo” lottery.
As Brian Honan points out, this is an interesting campaign because the base of potential victims is relatively small. The expert says he has already notified Google and other parties regarding the scam. In addition, IRISS-CERT has sent out an alert to warn users.
So what should you do in case you receive the scam emails? Here’s a piece of advice from Honan:
“Best thing for users to do is to simply ignore and delete any such emails. People should not respond to the emails, even to joke with the senders, as that simply confirms their email address is active and will be targeted with more scam emails in the future.”