Oooh, Microsoft and AOL Have Teamed up to Give me Money!

And I know this because they’ve sent me an email, in only slightly bad English (and some Portugeuse), with a return to a Yahoo address, telling me that I have won £1MM GPB in a lottery I never entered, and all I have to do to collect is to hand over all of my bank details.  Woot, woot!  I’m RICH!  See, look, sample is below:

The prestigious Microsoft and AOL has set out and successfully organized a Sweepstakes marking the year 2008 anniversary we rolled out over 400,419,864 USD for our Mid-year Anniversary Draws. Participants for the draws were randomly selected and drawn from a wide range of web hosts which we enjoy their patronage.

The selection was made through a computer draw system attaching personalized email addresses to ticket numbers. If you ignore this massage, you will defiantly regret it later. Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet companies and in effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an E-mail beta test.

So, if I don’t go to the spa right now, I will feel bad about it in a rebellious or cantankerous sort of way?  Well, at least this one’s learned to use spell-check, if not a dictionary.

I’m making light of this scam email, but people do fall for it, losing thousands of dollars before the scammers move on to their next victim(s).   If an email seems too good to be true, it is. 

1. No stranger wants to give you money for you to donate to charity in their name,
2. No deposed dictator’s family is asking a complete stranger and average Joe to help them free millions of dollars from a secret account,
3. You cannot win a lottery you haven’t entered,
4. There is no Mr. Smith who died in an accident of any kind, leaving behind a fortune and no relatives or instructions, so that his lawyers are picking random people from the internetz to pretend to be related and inherit. 

None of it is real.  The only people getting rich from any of these schemes are the thieves preying on the desperate, the ignorant, and the greedy.  Run Away!

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