How many online lotteries can you win without entering? None. How many e-mails will you get, saying you won a lottery you didn't enter? Lots and lots and lots. They're usually one of two scams.

• An Advance Fee Scam: This is where they tell you they need $5,000 to cover processing and lawyer fees to initiate the transfer of all your winnings. Then it hits a snag and they need another $2,000 for some other expense. And they'll keep running into difficulties and asking for more money until you finally realize you got rooked and give up.
• Identity Theft: They'll transfer your winnings to you as soon as you give them your name, social security number, bank account numbers, passwords, etc. You never get your money, but suddenly you have $50,000 in credit card debt and your bank account's been cleaned out.

I just got the following e-mail (slipped through the spam filters on my Yahoo mail account), telling me I won the South African Lottery...

Congratulations your email is among the two lucky winning that won$2,000,000.00{Two million United State Dollars}Each in the just concluded draw held to promote South African 2010 World Cup,sponsored by british american tobacco companies south africa.for prize claiming,Call Mr.TEMBI VUSI on this phone number +27 83 579 9019. or email him on tembivusi100@hotmail.com And also provide the following information for the processing and transfer of your winning fund.
NAME:...........................
ADDRESS:....................
NATIONALITY:......................
SEX:.............................
AGE:............................
PHONE/MOBILE:..........................
FAX:...................................
OCCUPATION:............................
COMPANY:....................................
Your Email Attached to Ticket No: (7YZ206) and ballot No: BT120/A)
Yours Faithfully, Management.

First, when I looked at the full headers, the "to" line was blank. That means it was mass mailed. Two winners and it went out to uncounted recipients?

Second, it's just like the Publishers Clearing House ads used to say about their sweepstakes: You can't win if you don't enter. If you never heard of this lottery and never entered it, you couldn't have won it.

Last, as my sainted father told me many times since I first opened the classified ads to hunt for my first summer job, 23 years ago, "if it sounds too good to be true, it's not true."

Best of luck to you all!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Techno Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.