I am Partho from Bangladesh. I received an email message that I am winner of this x-mas season yahoo/msn & microsoft windows live lottery held on December 2007. Prize money 5000,000 Great Britain pounds with Batch no., Reff no. & winning no. They wrote that send them my personal information in order to claim 5000,000 pounds within 10 days. What I should do? pls let me know immediately.
2007-12-25 23:10:16 · 5 answers · asked by partho_das08 1 in Business & Finance ➔ Taxes ➔ United Kingdom
Send them NOTHING. This is fraudulent. Yahoo, MSN and Microsoft do not hold lotteries. These people are looking to obtain personal information from you to defraud you.
2007-12-25 23:37:01 · answer #1 · answered by acermill 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
No. It is fraudulent (phishing scheme).
You shouldn't open unsolicted email from unknown sources. Often what happens is that when you open up spam, it sends back a trigger to the originating source indicating that a valid email address has been found thus subjecting you to even more spam down the road. Even using the preview pane in email products sends web beacons back to spammers.( http://helpdesk.gwu.edu/mailfilter/spam.html )
However, in this case since you have already opened up this email which is a probably a variant of the 419 Nigerian phishing scheme, display all headers and send it to Fraud Watch International. The email address is in the link to the webpage below.
http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/lottery/
There are a couple Yahoo pages dedicated to the 419 Fraud
Yahoo Lottery Fraud
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/abuse-63.html
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/abuse-110240.html
Microsoft also has a similar webpage
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/lottery.mspx
2007-12-25 23:17:45 · answer #2 · answered by MLM 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Nope, it's a very common scam. And pretty obvious from what they are asking you to send them. Just delete the email - you didn't win anything, it's not real.
2007-12-26 02:59:46 · answer #3 · answered by Judy 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It is a scam. Ignore it
2007-12-25 23:23:49 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
They want to cheat you. Ignore it.
2007-12-25 23:18:45 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋