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Oxfam Charity Spoofed By Lottery Scammers
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-03-04
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
You haven't won £850,000 ($1.68 million) from humanitarian charity Oxfam, no matter what an email message may tell you to the contrary.
Oxfam asks people to consider the needs of people in Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, among many other places, for their charitable giving. What Oxfam isn't doing is offering a lottery payout by email.
Security vendor Sophos said such messages were being picked up in inboxes. These charity notifications claim to have a £850,000 prize awaiting a claim from "10 lucky International recipients worldwide in different categories for their Business and Social Development."
No such lottery exists, and Oxfam has nothing to do with these spams. "The scam email tells recipients to contact a live.com email address, and also lists a UK 070 personal phone number for people who wish to make contact via telephone," Sophos said.
These 070 exchanges have found favor with criminals, according to Sophos' Graham Cluley. He said in the statement lottery scammers use these numbers to redirect calls to anywhere in the world.
Spam recipients are being encouraged to contact the National Secretary of Oxfam GB (UK) to provide information to receive their winnings. People will likely find this personal data being used to defraud, rather than enrich, them.
Security pros should remind their people they protect that there is no such thing as a free lunch, or free money, in spam or on websites. These scams persist because people choose to believe in a quick payout that should seem too good to be true to them, but doesn't.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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