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Facebook Scam E-mail Dupes End-users with ‘Gold Membership’ Bait

A most recent 419 scam, which's doing the rounds through electronic mail, so tricks recipients that they believe they're winners of a "gold membership" Facebook is offering by granting them a cash prize of $2.5m (1.7m EUR), reports Softpedia.com on February 20, 2012.

Beginning by telling the reader that his profile qualifies him for gold membership on Facebook, the fake electronic mail elaborates that Facebook is happy to declare that the reader's profile has now reached the cent percent status for gold membership and so the website has decided to award him $2,500,000. Consequently, it's being advised that the user get in touch with the website's Executive Secretary to learn about the directions for getting the award money, the electronic mail states.

The electronic mail also states that the user, for purposes of validation, must provide his name, address as well as the qualification number along with his Gold Membership Qualification Numbers: BB-456-76FUB and FB-57-20100. Finally, the e-mail ends by saying that it'll take a maximum of seven days to get the payment to the award winner once the current notification is dispatched.

But, as observed several times, responding to the e-mail or getting in touch with the Executive Secretary doesn't produce any prize rather the responder gets ensnared with too many requests, which the scammers create to falsify the situation and thereby make substantial profits by exploiting the victim's innocence.

Obviously, the e-mail isn't a Facebook message, still naïve end-users might fall for the variant of the 'advance fee scam.' Specialists remark that Facebook didn't send the e-mail, while the announcement of a prize award for the recipient is a fib. Indeed, working like any 'advance fee scam,' the message deceptively gets users to give away personal information and/or their money to the criminals.

Previously, similar scams involved bogus lottery schemes, which used reputed organizations' names like Nokia, BBC or Microsoft, while fooled Internauts into believing there were millions in prize for them.

Hence, it's recommended that people on the Internet remain vigilant of dubious e-mails, which give word for fantastic prizes from organizations/firms, which actually deal little with lotteries whatsoever.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 2/24/2012

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