Yahoo! Lottery notifications - don’t fall for ‘em!
- Posted May 8th, 2008 at 8:02 am by Ryan
- Categories: Anti-Spam, General, Tips & Tutorials
I trust that the vast majority of you all would never fall for such an obvious ruse (notice I spelled that correctly this time), but given the number of questions I’m getting via email, as well as what many users are asking on Yahoo! Answers (more than 6,000 questions!), I think it’s worth a reminder.
If you have received a message notifying you that you have won a Yahoo! Lottery award (no matter what country it claims to be from), don’t trust it. Over on the right I have a sample of a UK & Ireland version that offers winnings of £845,000. All you have to do is reply with all of your personal information!
Keep in mind that these types of messages can come in all shapes and sizes, and be any style imaginable. So the best thing to do is look for certain red flags. Be weary wary of any message containing the following:
requests for sensitive account information, passwords, or bank information.- offers of some form of unexpected financial windfall from estates or lotteries.
- anything that warns you not to tell anyone.
There are more, but those are some good ones to start with. If you are ever undecided about a message (some of the spammers are pretty crafty, after all) simply open a new browser and login to your account directly. If there is something important going on with your account, you should be notified when you login (this goes for most sites).
It also can’t hurt to keep an eye on the good ‘ol Yahoo! Security Site for all sorts of valuable tips to stay safe online!
Ryan K.
Community Manager
Yahoo! Mail
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- 38 Comments
May 8th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Oh, I see this is your way of trying to get out of the 845,000 GBP that you owe me, Mr. Nbutu Gala Gala. Well I’m on to you.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Good job on spelling ‘ruse’ correctly.
Unfortunately, the word ‘wary’ tripped you up this time. ‘Weary’ would mean that you were tired of it. Of course, we are all tired of receiving these spams…
May 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
thanks for the warning , no matter the spelling it was a good warning to everyone about lottery fraud and people trying to use your information to rip you off I receive at least 4 a day !! thanks again for the warning
May 8th, 2008 at 10:39 am
I recieved this so called winning email, and thankfully didn’t fall for it. Thanks for the heads up!!
May 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Citi Bank of London
To: lattnerkevin@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 1:44:17 PM
Subject: Account Activation Process
Citi Bank of London
+44) 70457 40369
+44)-070-7305-5822
14th Floor Citigroup Centre
Canada Square Canary Wharf
London E14 5LB
Tell
Fax
Certification Number: UKL/7/742/34
Reference Number: UKL/478593G9/19
Deposit Code: MDB/UKL/002/09/34
Identification Code: BDL/UKL/0736/027AG
Account Activation Process
With regards to your response. For the activation of an online account so as to aid the transfer of your funds into your designated bank account you are required to make available some amount of money as initial account deposit and also fill up the account activation form, the breakdown of charges are as follows.
Account Activation Fee
£480 GBP)
£300 GBP)
£780 GBP)
Vat Fee
Total
We have attached to this mail an account activation form you are to make a print out of this form, fill, scan thereafter send back to us as an e-mail attachment to complete the activation of your account this is after you have made the required payment for the activation of this account available, see payment details below.
Note that the security deposit charges paid will be credited to your account once your special deposit account is created. All funds remain your money even to the extent of account closure. This charge serves as initial deposit to your account in other for the money to be converted into cash.
Note: that your money is presently in bonds and it is protected by a hardcover insurance policy, which makes it impossible to deduct any amount from the money before it has been remitted to you. This means that the above charges cannot be deducted from the money and hence must be provided by you before your money is transferred to you. This is in accordance with section 13(1) (n) of the national gambling act as adopted in 1993 and amended on 3RD July 1996 by the Constitutional Assembly. This is to protect winners and to avoid misappropriation of funds.
Payment should be made via any Western Union Money Transfer agency in your location to our account’s officer with the name and address below;
Payment Details
Name: Mrs. Helen Ashley
Address: citi group Centre, 25 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5LB United Kingdom.
You are to send to us a scanned copy of the transfer/payment slip via email as an attachment to confirm payment and enhance documentation. Alternatively, you may make available the sender’s name and the Money Transfer Control Number issued after making the transfer.
After you have completed this process your account would be activated we would then send you your account details which includes the following below.
Account Number.
Account User Name.
Account Password.
For you to access and transfer your money online into your local bank account.
Good luck and congratulations once again, please do ensure to send your response within the next 12hrs to this same email address.
Regards,
Shawn Kormanek (Head of Operations)
Citibank International plc which trades as Citibank in the UK, is authorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Registered in England with no. 01088249. Registered Office: Citigroup Centre, Canada Square, London E14 5LB. VAT No. GB 429 6256 29. Ultimately owned by Citigroup Inc.
——————————————————————————–
Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
The World ’s Favourite Email.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Dam……these guys are terrible. Must be a way to lock them up…!!!!!
CP
May 8th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I could claim that I meant “having one’s patience, tolerance, or pleasure exhausted” … but really I’ve got to admit that it was my mistake.
-
And unlike my excuse from before (never having found an occasion to write the word “ruse”), I don’t have a leg to stand on this time.
-
Ryan
-
May 8th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
how do we get ‘em to stop….it’s just maddening.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
These pesty scammers should be apprehended and lynched from the highest tree.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Too…ur uh….I mean two more mistakes noted. Dam, actually it is damn. Recieved, received is correct. Remember i before e except after c. Just kitten, have a wonderful day!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:25 am
i was telling the rats that i was forwarding their emails to the fbi and i guess they got mad. they sent me an email saying that some friend of mine wants me dead and paid them to do it. but if i pay $5000 they will give me a tape of the friend asking them to kill me. i sent it on to he att. general and they were to send it to the fbi or who ever deals with this kind of threat. its getting to be a scary world out there.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:57 am
The easy way to spot official communication from Yahoo! is to look for the purple Y! symbol by the side of email.
See the link for an example screen-shot:
http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ymailofficial2oo8.png
May 9th, 2008 at 4:44 am
So, when will lottery.yahoo.com post a disclaimer stating that these fake lotteries are fake?
May 9th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Ryan, is there another “venue” (i.e. on-line form, e-mail address) for communicating general concerns about the blog to you. I don’t like to add a comment under a posting when it’s not related to the topic of discussion, but I can’t seem to find any alternative.
I have an alert set up in My Alerts to send me an e-mail whenever an update is made to the blog. I often receive multiple copies of the same updates, however there doesn’t seem to be a consistent pattern to the duplicate messages. I sometimes receive duplicate copies that are sent within minutes of one another, and additional duplicates will often arrive on subsequent days. But I don’t always receive duplicates of every update, and the number of duplicates received for an individual message varies.
I verified that I don’t have duplicate alerts set up in My Alerts. Do you have any knowledge of why this may be happening? Should I contact Customer Care with this concern?
May 9th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Another way to tell if it is phishing is if you put your mouse over the link (DON’T click), and on the bottom of your browser it says a different link. Obviously phishing.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Jason,
-
Does this happen for alerts designated on any other sites? Or just this blog?
-
Ryan
-
May 9th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I don’t care if you spell incorrectly. You still got the point across…
May 9th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Isn’t Ryan pretty?
With looks like that a couple of spelling mistakes really don’t matter
May 9th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
شبكة ومنتديات قمر اشام
May 10th, 2008 at 6:10 am
What’s sad is that these guys would not be doing this unless there was money in it. That means enough people, somewhere, are falling for it enough to make it profitable. But the sheer number of these things popping up in the mail make you wonder, how could anyone be so gullible?
May 10th, 2008 at 8:12 am
I’ll make sure not to fall for any scams, thanks for the info pretty Ryan.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:11 am
I hope something can be done about these attempted swindles. Every time I receive one (lots say they are from the Bank of Africa) I save them in a folder, where they number almost 50 now. I tried to write to Interpol online, but couldn’t make it go through.
I received a Yahoo one just before reading your warning, and was tempted, because it didn’t ask for any account info, but decided to hold off before getting carried away- thankfully!
May 10th, 2008 at 10:06 am
I never believed such mails , i always spam them. any one who respond for such mails shoud be out of his mind
May 10th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I’ve been forwarding all such emails to this government address, in hopes that something will be done to stop these scam artists. Just add it to your “Contacts” list, and when you get this type of email, forward and delete it.
spam@uce.gov
May 11th, 2008 at 11:39 am
These fake lottery e-mails kill me. But what gets me more is the people that fall for it. Now, if you didn’t play the lottery in any of these countries, why would you think you are winner???????????
May 12th, 2008 at 5:13 am
I m also receiving these mails on daily basis….Can any one please tell me how can i stop receiving them….? There must be some way to stop these mails…Sometime i fear of these mail yar…!!
May 12th, 2008 at 5:35 am
I as well receive these winning lottery emails or the emails come from an inheritance, like someone you don’t know is actually going to send you millions of dollars just because you’ve giving all your information to them, NOT !!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Toi cung da nhan duoc buc thu tuong tu & da cung cap kha nhieu thong tin ca nhan cho ho. Khong biet thong tin cua minh se bi dung vo viec gi day???
May 13th, 2008 at 5:09 am
i don’t play lottery games so i’m not tented to fall of it.it’s good that you guys make this advertisments it’s good for the one who don’t know of this things.
May 14th, 2008 at 4:48 am
I receive a lot of e-mail in my “Bulk” about PayPal notifying me that my account is open or my request has been accepted etc…or that I won the lottery that I did not know about I don’t even open those. Delete.
If it arrives in my “inbox”, delete too.
Guys, this is the best way to do. Don’t open, just delete.
But i would like to know is there any way to get rid of those e-mail?
May 14th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I work at a community college. Whenever anyone gets one of these she/he will send it out to everyone so we can all have a good laugh. Usually there are many grammer and spelling errors that a professional would not make.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
wow its amazing all the scammers out there.According to all these scammers by now I should be a bizionaire,and wow its amazing how much family that I didnt even know I had all over the world are just dieing right and left.
I would have an increditable headache if I actually believed them.
Anyhow thanks again for your helping us keep on top of these scumbag scammers.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:52 am
If their email address ends with yahoo.com or hotmail.com or any other free email address its 100% a sure fake.
May 15th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Wow…this stuff is getting really out of hand. Thanks so much for the valuable information.
May 16th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Ryan,
In response to your question posted on May 9, I believe the duplicate alert messages have only been happening with the Mail blog.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:42 am
WOW, I didnt need a warning but I surely appreciate it. I have recieved about four or five of these notices letting me know that i won 590,000 pounds. Well I went ahead and replied via email and phone letting them know that if I were the winner of thier lottery then surely I would have entered and surely they would have had my phone and home adress. unrelentingly they sent another email asking me for a voided check so they would know my routing number, yeah they probably wouold have taken 590,000 pounds out. I cant imagine the bounce check fee on that. It’s either that or it cost 1,000 dollars to send the check for 500 bucks, yahooers BEWARE, and SMART. GOOD LUCK.
May 27th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Why do we still receive them? I have been hitting the spam button on these for years and I still get them, almost daily.
What happens to email we mark as spam?
May 27th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Hooray! Looks like Yahoo! has finally filed a lawsuit against these criminals.
http://boxofmeat.net/post/36275585/sfgate-yahoo-files-suit-against-lottery-spammers