Digital Wild West

What does that mean? No idea.

In the constant cat & mouse game between Internet fraudsters and you, the more interest taken in scammy emails, the more confidence in spotting and dealing with them.

In other words, choose to be ignorant – seeing Internet and email as a huge unfathomable mystery of the universe – and you will always be a victim.

Sorry for the lecture. It’s just that I’m self taught and choose to dedicate a modest percentage of my life being aware of threats, while my clientele choose to treat their primary tool of trade – the humble PC – and all it encompasses (their lives) as a forbidding and eternal puzzle. When all they need do is learn about it, like they did to drive a car.

Having said that, I nevertheless sympathize with those having trouble with remote controls. I’m still confounded by the half-dozen in my house, all of which have 30 – 60 buttons to do really complex tasks like “on” or “play.”

This week’s fraud email – I assume instantly it’s fraud, as I haven’t entered a competition for about 25 years – sails under the Coca Cola flag of convenience:

THE COCA COLA COMPANY
PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD
DEPT COCA COLA AVENUE
STAMFORD BRIDGE LONDON
SW1V 3DW UNITED KINGDOM.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws held on the (1st October 2008) by Coca-Cola Promotion, your email was among the 20 Lucky winners who won £1,000,000.00 each on the the COCA COLA COMPANY PROMOTION.

your email was attached to ticket number(7PWYZ2008) and ballot number (BT:12052008/20), The on-line draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of (2500,000) However, no tickets were sold (free of
charge) all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy. E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies and picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the Internet.

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection machine (TOPAZ) from a database of over 2500,000 email addresses which was drawn from all the continent s of the world This Lottery is approved by the British Gaming Board and also Licensed by the The International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR).. This lottery is the 3rd of its kind and we intend to sensitize the public. 

this to inform you that your winning was zoned among to be released from our payment office in west Africa. The Payment of our winners was grouped into three payment zones.
{Europe, ASIA And united kingdom} through computer balloting and you were zoned to our united kingdom Office for payment. so you will contact the united kingdom office (Mr.
Frank Brown) for payment.

Winner shall be paid within 5hours after contacting thier Claims Agents. In other to claim your £1,000,000.00 CHEQUE prize winning, you will have to fill the form below and send it to the united kingdom Claims Agent Bank for claims

CLAIMS REQUIREMENT

Your Full Name:…………………
Your Age:………………………
Your Sex:………………………
Your Address:……………………
Your Phone:…………………….
Your Country:……………………
Your Email:…………………….
Your Ticket Number……………….

Your Ballot Number………………
Note: this lottery must be claimed within 10days after date of receiving this notification Claims your winnings CHEQUE as soon as possible by sending your claims form with details to claims agent bank.

CONTACT CLAIMS AGENT BANK
Informa tion and Payment Bureau:
united kingdom Representative Office.
Name:Mr. Frank Brown
EMAIL: mr.frankbrown007@hotmail.com
Tele: +44 70359 42580

Your Sincerely,
Management
EDWARD PETER

Well, duh!

And only a million bucks prize money, huh? Oh well, guess I’d better send Edward Peter, or Mr. Frank Brown, at Hotmail, not at Coca Cola dot com, everything about me.

And I may as well preempt their unlikely reply with the only other item of personal importance they might seek, my bank account number.

Oh, and thank heavens they included those pesky and elusive ticket and ballot numbers that, in the next breath, they request.

Ho hum, another day on the Internet.

Cyberfraud, Email scam

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.