I recently received an email from Yahoo Ireland and Uk lottery, are they associated with your company?

Question

Here is a copy of the email
Dear Yahoo Subscriber

We are pleased to inform you of the results of the just concluded Yahoo Xmas Millions Promotional Bonus which drew your email address as one of the lucky winners of this year's Xmas Millions Platinum Vactaion Trip Card.

Being one of the lucky winners of the Yahoo Xmas Millions Bonanza you are therefore a recepient of the Platinum Vaction Trip Card which affords you the opportunity to tour round five major cities in Europe,America and Asia as a special xmas vaction plan, arranged by Yahoo Group Uk,your accomodation and feeding cost are all inclusive in your winning Platinum Vacation Trip Card .

The Xmas Vacation Platinum Card has an instant cash value of 525,000.00GBP(Five Hundred and Twenty Five Thousand Pound Sterling),which is redeemable in cash.

Winners can either redeem Platinum Vactaion Trip Card. to engage in the Yahoo Round the world vacation trip,or the equivallent cash amount of 525,000.00GBP- learn more about-YAHOO XMAS MILLIONS/GET FREE QUOTE. -

All Email Address where collated from our world wide data base was electronically extrapolated,and after a random computarised ballot selection by our secure ORACLE DATA BASE raffle system,five emails emerged as the first lucky winners of this year's Yahoo Xmas Millions Bonanza in which your email address was randomly selected as one of the lucky winners.

Your email address was electronically attached to the following credentials,

Play Ticket# :10222/YXP-00152

Claims Sort #:000000234/109.

Draw Date:week 1/Nov 11th 2006.

To Proceed with the immidiate process of your claims you willl be required to contact the Yahoo Xmas Millions Claims Redemption Office,with the following informations.

FULL NAMES:

AGE:

NATIONALITY:

WINNING EMAIL ADDRESS:

OCCUPATION:

PLAY TICKET #:

CLAIM SORT #:

DRAW DATE:

Submit all informations via email to the Desk of the Yahoo Xmas Millions Claims Process office;

CLAIMS OFFICER:MR.Jerry Mills

TEL:[phone]

EMAIL:[e-mail]

The Yahoo Xmas Millions Email Bonanza is organised annually,as a Bonanza for all users of Yahoo mail world wide,above the age of 18years.

From all members and staff of the Yahoo Xmas Millions promotions of Yahoo Group UK,we say congratulations for your sucess in the recently concluded Yahoo Xmas Millions Draws of 4th November 2006

N.B:
Please quote your Reference number in all correspondence with the claims officer.

Winners are advice to keep this award confidential until prize are claimed to avert incidence of impersonation by unscrupulous elements,please be informed.

Best Regards,
Theresa Taylor(Mrs.)
Yahoo Group UK/Xmas Millions Promotion
www.yahoo.co.uk.
TEl:[phone]

The YAHOO XMAS MILLIONS BONANZA PLUS, is proudly sponsored by the YAHOO GROUP UK,BRITISH AIR WAYS PLC,BARCLAYS BANK PLC UK. AND DIAMOND FINANCE COMPANY UK.

Answer 1

Did you buy a lottery ticket?
If not this is a scam. I get about five per day.
Just delete it and ignore it..

www.fraudaid.com/ScamSpam/Lottery/lottery_scam_names.htm www.scambuster419.co.uk/lottery.htm
antivirus.about.com/cs/hoaxes/p/lottery.htm
www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/lotterywin.htm

Answer 2

This is definitely a scam. I used to work for a major bank for 4 years and I saw a bunch of these. There are a couple of obvious signs with these.

The first, and most obvious is, do you remember entering a drawing of some sort? Nobody automatically enters you into a drawing, you first have to agree to all the terms of the lottery.

Second, most of these e-mails will have improper use of the English language or obvious spelling errors. Your e-mail in the 3rd paragraph from the bottom says "Winners are advice..." instead of "advised". If this was an official multimillion lottery, there would be no oversights like this, ever.

Third, these scams are always international. The two most common ones you'll find are Great Brittain and Africa. Most British ones will use the lottery scam and will sometimes copy and paste logos from major banks, like Barclays (I've seen that one many times). The African ones will usually say something about your mutual friend recommending you as a trusted source for financial transactions, and they need to transfer millions of dollars of legitimate funds to U.S. because of some problem with the banking system or the government in that particular country (usually South Africa). They will send the money through your account and you keep a percentage.

Fourth red flag is when people ask you to reply with your information. If you truly entered this lottery, they would already know your name and age. In future e-mails they will ask for more information, perhaps the birthday and social security number, so they can do identity theft, or your account number and routing number so they can steal money from your bank. They'll probably tell you they need the info so they can wire the funds directly to you.

While we are on the subject of online scams, there are two other ones that I used to see at the bank a lot. One is an e-mail that looks like it's from your bank or credit card company, saying that your account information has probably been compromised and you need to follow a link to update your password. Never follow a link in an e-mail to enter your info. If your account is, for example, with Chase bank, you would need to go to www.chase.com and log in through there to update any information you might need. Most financial institutions will not send you links in their e-mails for that exact reason. This scam was also very poplular with Ebay and Paypal.

The last scam we've seen a lot is with Ebay and Autotrader. People will send you a cashier's check or postal money order in exchange for merchandise or car. The check is fake. In case of Ebay, they'll usually send you a check for more, like $3,000 for a $2,200 item. They'll say that they sent you too much by mistake and since it's certified funds and you know they are good, you need to send them the difference along with the product. One thing that people don't realize is that cashier's checks and postal money orders can be faked, and the bank won't know right away that they are fake, so if you have a good account with them, they won't hold the check and give you instant access to the money. So you think the check has cleared, but in fact the bank just gave you immediate credit for the money they have not collected yet. Once they realize that the check is bad, a couple of days down the road, they'll have to debit your account for the full amount and you'll have to pay them back every penny of it or ruin your credit.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure it's a scam. Try ringing the telephone number quoted to make sure.

Answer 4

These are all scams. Report these emails as spam and delete them.

Answer 5

It's a scam. Delete it.