Winning Notification

Gary -

I got this email today –

WINNING NOTIFICATION
The prestigious Microsoft has successfully organised and sent out Sweepstakes marking the 2007 anniversary. Microsoft is running an e-mail beta test. Your email address as indicated was drawn and attached to ticket number 08795727498 with serial numbers BTD/9080648302/07 and drew the lucky numbers 14-21-25-39-40-47(20) which subsequently won you 1.000.000.00(One Million Great Britain Pounds). Please be informed by this winning notification. To file your claims, please contact your assign claims agent with your ticket number, serial numbers and your drew the lucky number.

Mr. Kyle Hitchens
Microsoft Award Promotion
Head Winning Claims Dept.
E-Mail:: kylehitchenss@yahoo.de

The effort that spammers must go through to get around spam detection software must be huge now, I get about 1 spam email a day but always have over 2000 in the spam folder of Gmail, which means I get sent almost 3 spam emails every hour.

This spammer obviously got through the filter but unfortunately is completely unbelievable –

  1. “Sweepstakes marking the 2007 anniversary.” – Anniversary of what?
  2. “Microsoft is running an e-mail beta test.” – An email beta test of giving away money?
  3. ticket number 08795727498 with serial numbers BTD/9080648302/07 and drew the lucky numbers 14-21-25-39-40-47(20) – Is (20) the bonus ball?
  4. 1.000.000.00(One Million Great Britain Pounds) – Without the full stops it looks more like one hundred million
  5. Please be informed by this winning notification. – Consider me informed
  6. kylehitchenss@yahoo.de – Microsoft Award Promotion uses a yahoo email address with two ss in the name because kylehitchens@yahoo.de is already taken.

The US FTC has a great report which can be downloaded here regarding fraud and statistics about how much money and how many people are involved.