Why am I receiving e-mails that have said that I have won a lottery from yahoo news. It appears real. Is it?

I have received 2 e-mails within the last 2 days stating that I have won a yahoo news lottery. These e-mails look legit although my good sense tells me different. The e-mails themselves contain yahoo logos along with people to contact about the winnings. If this is a scam or hoax(which I am sure that it is) then the authorities at yahoo need to get to the bottom of this and bring forth lawsuits if needed to get this scam stopped. The biggest red flag warning to me that this is not legit is that the contact people are from the UK and although they do not ask for personal info like bank account numbers or SSN, they do ask for other things such as name, address, sex, DOB, age, occupation, telephone number, fax, marital status, the month you won and the winning number, batch number, and lotto number. Has anyone else out there in internet land received a similar e-mail from what appears to be yahoo. If so, I would like to know. Thanks.

Technorati Tags: authorities, bank account numbers, batch number, e mail, good sense, hoax, internet land, lawsuits, logos, lottery, marital status, occupation, personal info, red flag, telephone number, winning number, yahoo, yahoo news

5 Responses

justlilolme
19 Apr 2010

Just go with your ‘common sense’. Of course its not legit. There are dozens of similar such emails around the net nowdays. Just go with your gut instincts and "BEWARE"!! You can report them (and other similar ones) to spoof@yahoo.com NEVER respond or even open them, simply delete them and move on. Don’t even do the ‘unsubscribe’ thing because that alerts them that yours is an active email address and thats what they are after so they can add your email adress to thousands of such lists and bombard you.

Rommie
19 Apr 2010

No, it’s spam. Yahoo doesn’t do lottery or promos. Just delete it.

oozahnawahtzyl
19 Apr 2010

You can’t ever win the lottery through e-mail, mail, or phone, the only legitimate lottery is that of your state, so never give any of your info to anyone that claims you have won something.

lucee
19 Apr 2010

Gee, another one that has never heard of spam email. Everyone in the world gets them, you are no exception. And Yahoo is not responsible for the email you receive. That’s why they give you a spam button. The rest of us just block it and go on – evidently you are having a spasm of some kind. Ask yourself if you bought a lottery ticket? If you didn’t, then how would you win a lottery? Ask yourself if Yahoo, or MSN, or Microsoft, or anyone else can afford to give away these fabulous amounts of money and still stay in business? Now, just press the spam button, take a deep breath, and blame the spammers, and yourself. You opened this email, and when you did, it triggered a response to the spammer. Now they know they have a legitimate address to send more spam to. Actually, most of this crap comes from Nigeria, China, Russia and other parts of the world. good luck finding them.

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