RunOnFriday.com Blog

It’s hard to imagine, but people still fall for scams like this all the time.

I just got another “you won the lottery” spam e-mails.  This one was supposedly from “MICROSOFT CORPORATIONS”(sic), and contained the following message:

You have been awarded the sum of £1,625,000.00GBP in the MICROSOFT EMAIL PROMOTI
ON AWARD 2010.Cont Mr Mark Anderson with your names,address,phone and Country to
[elided]@w.cn.cn or call +4470-[elided] for moreinformation on t
his award.

With the exception of removing the username part of the e-mail address, and the rest of the phone number, that is the exact contents of the e-mail, spelling and line breaks as-is.

With so many obvious “this isn’t real” warning signs, I find it hard to imagine that people still fall for this. Yet they do.

• The “from” with “MICROSOFT CORPORATIONS”(sic).
• The e-mail address this was supposedly “from” is an Italian domain, ending in “.it”.
• I am in the United States, yet the supposed award is in British Pounds.
• I never entered a “MICROSOFT EMAIL PROMOTION AWARD” promotion.
• The e-mail address I am supposed to reply to isn’t the “from” address.  (It should at least be the same domain name.)
• The e-mail address I am supposed to reply to is a Chinese domain (ending in “.cn”).
• The phone number starts with +”4470″.  This is a UK prefix that can forward anywhere in the world.  See here for more information.
• The numerous spelling errors, typos, improper word breaks, and so on.

And that’s just a quick 30-second look.

The easiest way to know this is fake is this…  If you didn’t enter your e-mail address into some online promotion, it’s not real!