You might be one of those people who received dozens of emails from a far away country, coming from an unknown company telling you that you won great sum money. I remember my first email lottery winning notification. The letter sounds convincing. It shows the detail of how I won, how much is it, and how can I claim my prize money. The instruction was detailed, looks believable except from the fact that I never joined online and offline lottery nor sweepstakes.
On one hand, the letter says that I won from a random email lottery and that my email address with an attached number was picked among billions of users. But wait, before you get too overwhelm with the thought of winning the lottery, you should take note that there is no such thing as random email lottery or sweepstakes. What’s makes it more suspicious is because you got it for free. Lotteries and sweepstakes are definitely not free; the winning prize comes from the accumulated sale of the lottery or sweepstakes tickets. These rotating emails are one of those internet frauds or online scams devised by people who want to earn easy money.
Sweepstakes and lottery are both known method of fund-raising. Although some people view these as painless methods of making a fortune, the exact thought is used by scammers to take advantage with those hopefuls. While some hope to hit the winning lottery numbers, others benefit for this great cause. Aside from tax which turned over in the government, part of the money goes to educational institutions, scholarships, medical assistance and more. And if the winning prize isn’t redeemed in the span of time, the sum of money will definitely be given a lot of charitable institutions and associated foundation.
Decades before, a number of governments prohibit this activity but today, government legalized it and even made it a national lottery; after all lottery helps raise revenue in addition to taxes. In many cases , if not a great majority it may seem indeed that the precursor “charity” , which the government officials authorities are “rescuing” and saving you from , was a lot more fair and liberal when it came to both prize payouts and amount and percentages of funds that went to the “chosen cause”. So be it I guess – its 2010 and era of President Obama who after all is looking after your own and your family’s interest to the hilt.
Now, as for email lottery scam, they will ask you to fill out a form or provide essential information as part of process of claiming the price. This includes your banking details and some personal information including your SSS number. Beware that these pieces of information can be used by the scammer to take advantage of you or utilize to scam others. You might get into trouble by giving them your information. So in the end, the great advice that I could give you is to stay away from these notifications and just delete them if you get a chance. You can also tag them as spam so that other email user will be warned about this online fraud campaign.
10 Mar
