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Spam Scheme Posing as Microsoft Lottery Circulating Online

According to researchers from Avira the security company, one spam mail has been recently hitting Internet users, while asserting that it is from certain Microsoft Lottery, which in reality doesn't exist. Softpedia.com reported this in news on December 22, 2011.

The e-mail, congratulating the recipient, tells him that he's one of the winners selected when the Microsoft/AOL/Nokia award anniversary over the Internet was conducted at 2011 starting. Microsoft as well as AOL with Nokia mobile-phones is presently executing one beta test; consequently, a $1,000,000 award has been announced for anyone winning this test, the fake electronic mail states.

Reportedly, cyber-criminals in this scam aim at ensuring that the maximum possible people would believe it, while that is perhaps the reason why they used Nokia's and AOL's names in addition to Microsoft's. And in case anyone would think that a Microsoft Lottery is non-existent he may at least be convinced of the portion relating to the reward from Nokia or AOL, the criminals hope.

The spurious electronic mail at the end, directs its recipient for contacting his Claim Agent Officer from within the UK for collecting the prize-money by providing the details such as his full name, gender, birth date, address, occupation, telephone number, country-of-origin, e-mail, winning file code, and the winning prize amount.

According to the Avira researchers, it's astonishing for finding the great amount of labor the e-mail scammers put for crafting such a realistic appearing message. The current scam e-mail contains pictures and text in the background, with text partially colored, and several security alerts in anticipation that the reader will think he's really seeing a formal document.

Nonetheless, irrespective of the extent of realism in the e-mail, it's nothing but a scam, while recipients of such e-mails should do nothing but simply delete them. The security specialists in addition state that one must never give away the requested details for then he may get trapped in an unintended game.

Meanwhile, anybody whose money has been forfeited because of a fraudulent Microsoft sweepstake is advised to notify Action Fraud about the incident as well as forward the phony message at lotfraud@microsoft.com.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

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