MoMusings

Wow, must be my lucky day, according to an e-mail I’ve just received, I’ve won ‘1 Million US Dollars‘ and those of you that read my blog, will know that I’ve already been informed by another e-mail that I’ve already won ‘800,000 Euros‘ today!

Hang on, this is another lottery that is allegedly sponsored by Microsoft, and yet again I don’t remember entering any lottery!

Here are a couple of screenshots, showing the whole e-mail in all its glory:

Once more Bill Gates gets a mention, and the following line just makes me chuckle:

“DO NOT REPLY ANY OTHER MAILS LIKE THIS ON NET, AS THEY ARE LOT OF SCAM ARTIST OUT THERE PRETENDING TO BE US…”

Tell me about it, what a bunch of scammers!

Just to make it crystal clear, yet again, this is a scam, there is no money, and I haven’t really won anything…Damn, I suppose I better cancel that order for the Ferrari and the new guitars now?

Blimey, there’s that woman again [but she’s changed her name], from the 800,000 Euros wining e-mail, but now she has a friend with her. Anyone know who the women in the picture are, I’m sure they will be delighted to know that they are being used to help make a scam more believable?

Whoopee! I won 800,000 Euros in the latest lottery being run by Microsoft…..Imagine what I can do with that much money; buy a Ferrari [but I don’t drive, maybe I could learn?], pay off my mortgage, do a round-the-world trip, buy lots more spiders, snakes and guitars….Oh, and let my wife have some too!

Hang on, I don’t remember entering any lottery!

OK, calm down, this isn’t all it seems to be, as usual.

Yes, hopefully by now you’ve realised that it is the latest incarnation of the infamous lottery scam from those wonderful 419ers. The boys and girls from Lagos have excelled themselves once more. Yes, as usual they are using the name of a large company; Microsoft [in this case] but are also using another company name, that of the F. P. S. which they claim is the ‘Foundation for the Promotion of Software products’ [which doesn’t seem to exist outside these scams]. They even go on to use ‘Bill Gates‘ name as if that will give it more credence.

Here are a couple of screenshots, showing the whole e-mail in all its glory:

Just to make it crystal clear, this is a scam, there is no money, and I haven’t really won anything, well, apart from the right to read the latest ‘fiction‘ from those running these scams.

Anyone know who the woman in the picture ‘really‘ is?

By the way, I think that F.P.S really stands for ‘Foolish People Scammers‘? Any better suggestions?

P.S. I have a number of postings planned already for next week, including the ‘Monthly Malware Review’ for October, an interesting case of a Phishing Scam, with an extra sting in its tail, and another update on the latest tricks being employed by the spammers. If anything else interesting or newworthy crops up I’ll try and post that too.