The other day we received a Lottery scam email, purporting to come from BBC. The email contained a document telling us that our email account won 500.000 GBP in a charity Bonanza and the sender claimed that the email address was taken from a Database of Internet Users – which naturally does not exist. But let’s take a look at the email.
First of all, the document itself looks quite official since it mentions BBC and National Lottery names in multiple places. It also includes a link to the official website of BBC and provides a signature of the sponsor of the lottery in the bottom of the document (fake signature naturally, but anyway).
But then, what are the things that made the email it suspicious? First of all, we were asked to fill in a form with our personal details including bank account number and a passport photograph. Definitely a phishing attempt. Never ever give your bank account details in an email!
Then, the name of the sender of the email is bbcdraw123 and then instead of an official address, the email comes from the domain live.com (bbcdraw123@live.com). Of course, no official organization has this kind of serial numbers as email names, and the domain should be the organization itself and not a general free email domain. Remember to be cautious when you see ‘official’ emails coming from popular domain servers instead of the organization (eg.gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com).
BBC is already aware of this scam and informs people in its website how to protect of these kind of lottery scams. BBC is not in any connection with this scam, but the scammer uses the term BBC Lottery in order to deceive internet user. On the top of all, BBC is not a lottery company, but a broadcasting company who cooperates with the National Lottery.
This is only one example out of the hundreds or even thousands scam emails that that are spread daily. Keep in mind that it is impossible to win in a lottery that you never participated into thus avoid falling into this kind of trap.
You can see the email attachment image in better quality on our Flickr page.
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