A report has revealed that lottery scams now account for half of all spam.  The research was conducted by Microsoft in the UK, Germany, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.  This means lottery scams are one of the fastest growing areas of cyber-crime.

The research has found the problem is even more widespread in the UK where roughly 62 percent of spam emails are lottery scams. 

16 percent of people who received lottery scam emails opened some of them, with 10 percent replying to at least one and 20 percent clicked on links inside the emails.

The research also found that 3 percent have lost money to the scammers over the past year.

I, myself have received a lottery scam email but I deleted it straight away as I suspected it was a scam.

Microsoft’s chief security advisor, Ed Gibson said, “Internet lottery scams are one of the fastest growing areas of cyber-crime.”

“The scams are of increasing concern to international law enforcement, offering criminals a low-risk opportunity to steal money from Internet users.”

You first receive an unsolicited email, stating you have won a prize on an international lottery.  To claim your prize you are told to contact the official “agent” in charge of your case.  You are also told to keep the win confidential for “security reasons.”  If you reply to the email, the scammers will send further emails or even phone you to make it look like a legitimate operation.

You then may be asked for your bank details, personal information and copies of your passport and driving licence.  If you do this its obviously in good faith that you are proving your identity and they can transfer your winnings into your account.  If you do this the scammers then have enough information to steal your identity.

The scammers will then request an advanced fee to cover administration, legal or delivery costs.  Winnings are then never paid out to the unlucky victim.

Microsoft said the scams are insidious as they work through social engineering, rather than exploiting technical flaws in software.

This means they are extremely difficult to track and as a result it is difficult to catch and prosecute the scammers.

Jacques Erasmus, a security specialist from Prevx said, “Lottery scams entice people with the false promise of large sums of money for little or no effort on their part.”

“Once a person is involved in the scam, they are asked to pay certain amounts of money to expedite the process such as an upfront ‘administration fee’.  They end up not making a single pound.” 

Research by the Internet Crime Complaint Centre has discovered that advance fee frauds including lottery scams are the most expensive form of Internet fraud with a median of $5,000 per victim.

Ed Gibson added, “We want to raise awareness of a growing type of Internet crime.  Make no mistake, the criminals that perpetrate these crimes are extremely clever and devious, and unfortunately successful.”

So you have been warned, if you get an unsolicited email saying you’ve won an international lottery, delete it.

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