ONLINE Scams............

[Smitty]

just received this....


National Lottery
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)

Ref: xxxxxxx
Batch: 12/25/xxxxx

We happily announce to you the draw (#953) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY, online
Sweepstakes International program held on 4th january, 2007.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 5647560054 drew the lucky number. (huh??..never bought one)

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of £250,000 (Two hundred
and fifty thousand pounds sterling) in cash credited to file KTU/xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Contact person.

Mr. Terry Martins.
Email: terri_claimagent@yahoo.co.uk (WHO..?)

Yours faithfully,
Mr. Howard Hensan.
Online coordinator for UK NATIONAL LOTTERY
Sweepstakes International Program.
NATIONAL LOTTERY.



...yeah right
Upon checking at -http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/playe ... ommonscams
yep..annuver scam

be careful in cyberspace peoples

[Neka79]

dude..im suprised u checked it..or posted it up here....
i reckon i get 10 of them a month..and i dont buy tix...so...i figure nothing good will happen to me...

[Duane]

i was about to say the same thing as neka

where i work gets roughly 40,000 spam emails every 4 hours

[Lainie]

Me too Never have had them in my hotmail account though just the optus one

[Smitty]

...first one I have had , came to my Homail account
(not my Yahoo account or my free ISP accounts or work one)
and
apparently, this is a reasonably new type of scam
...according to the 'real' National Lottery
hence
my reason for posting the warning

cheers

[mick_dundee]

Just remmeber your KSRC buddies when you take the 250000 pounds off their hands Smitty That's close enough to 750k here and that can buy a lot of beer and mototrbikes

[MickLC]

The only reason we get so much spam is because people are stupid enough to fall for that shit...serves them right

[Smitty]

The only reason we get so much spam is because people are stupid enough to fall for that shit...serves them right

Mick....
I have NOT replied

[MickLC]

The only reason we get so much spam is because people are stupid enough to fall for that shit...serves them right

Mick....
I have NOT replied

Yeah I know, but there are people stupid enough who will and they are the reason we get so much shit spam...and if they are that stupid and haven't figured these things out yet then they deserve what they get (or lose)

[mrmina]

i was about to say the same thing as neka

where i work gets roughly 40,000 spam emails every 4 hours

thats a shit load of spam....

mmmm spam

[Stereo]

...yeah right
Upon checking at -http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/information.do?info=commonscams
yep..annuver scam

You checked......... because........... you might have won? LOL@U!

[Stereo]

The only reason we get so much spam is because people are stupid enough to fall for that shit...serves them right

Mick....
I have NOT replied

Yeah I know, but there are people stupid enough who will and they are the reason we get so much shit spam...and if they are that stupid and haven't figured these things out yet then they deserve what they get (or lose)

Actually, there are several reasons why your email can end up on spam lists:

In order of most common:
1. You have signed up to recieve emails from a non reputable source and they have sold your email address to spammers.
2. Spammers have used a "spider" program to find your email address on a web site (perhaps even this one, that is why you NEVER write your correct email address in a forum or publish it on a web site).
3. They extract your email from a cookie in your cookies folder of your internet browser.(this is what porn sites are accused of)
4. They get your email address from a virus/spybot that extracts your email address from outlook or outlook express. (Not necissarily on YOUR machine, if your email address is in someone elses address book and they get this virus/spybot... yer screwed too!).

Solutions?

In order of most effective
1. Change your email address. (this works, guaranteed!)
2. Get an antispam program (I have seen various degrees of success with this, none of them very good).

Avoiding it in the future:

1. Use a secure browser. Pretty much any one of them but not Internet explorer 6.xxx

2. Use a virus scanner AND keep it up to date (something most people find too hard).

3. Scan your machine for spybots daily (you can set seek&destroy as an automated task, let me know if you need to know how).

4. Disable the preview pane in your email browser (this stop your machine from confirming automatically that you have recieved their trial spam).

5. NEVER publish your correct email address on the web. If you MUST do it, have another email address that you use for it.... Yahoo or hotmail are great for that.

6. For those extremists out there, use ZoneAlarm (or another similar personal firewall) to block any unwanted info leaving your computer.

[MickLC]

Thanks for the cut and paste job Stereo, but what I'm talking about is not how they get your email address, but the fact that they bother in the first place.

If people weren't so stupid falling for scams then the spammers wouldn't bother sending the spam. People are that stupid, so we get heaps of spam. Because stupid people are the reason we get spam, then they get what they deserve when they are burned by it. Simple really.

[Stereo]

Thanks for the cut and paste job Stereo, but what I'm talking about is not how they get your email address, but the fact that they bother in the first place.

If people weren't so stupid falling for scams then the spammers wouldn't bother sending the spam. People are that stupid, so we get heaps of spam. Because stupid people are the reason we get spam, then they get what they deserve when they are burned by it. Simple really.

Actually... I wrote that myself.........

As long as they have a 0.0001% success rate they still make a couple of grand a week.....

[MickLC]

Thanks for the cut and paste job Stereo, but what I'm talking about is not how they get your email address, but the fact that they bother in the first place.

If people weren't so stupid falling for scams then the spammers wouldn't bother sending the spam. People are that stupid, so we get heaps of spam. Because stupid people are the reason we get spam, then they get what they deserve when they are burned by it. Simple really.

Actually... I wrote that myself.........

As long as they have a 0.0001% success rate they still make a couple of grand a week.....

Did you? Nice work then

...and if it's 0.0001% of millions of people and it's enough to make a couple of grand a week that just goes to show how many stupid people there are in the world.