Online Lottery Scams-Were You Notified?
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.
If you are a regular player, you must also be aware of how other people use its popularity to make money and scam lottery hopefuls. A lottery scam is one form of advance-fee fraud which basically commence with an unsolicited email notification that you hit the jackpot or you have been one of the winners of a recently held drawing. The winning notification instructs the recipient of the message to keep the notice confidential for security purposes. The email notification includes a contact number of a person you should reach for additional instructions on how to claim the prize. Eventually, once you decided to call the person, the agent will ask the “winner” for processing fees or transfer charges in order to send the lottery winnings but you will never receive any lottery payment.
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.
Winning the lottery is like 1:1,000,000 chances. Although it’s possible that you could win, in reality the chance is so low. So be extra cautious in replying a suspicious email lottery winning notification; the information that you might provide maybe used against you or to future email scam victims.
