Google Lottery Scam!

Have you received this kind of scam below? They are obviously stealing your identity:

    

Stamford New Road,

Altrincham Cheshire,

WA14 1EP

London,

United Kingdom.

GOOGLE AWARDS.

 We wish to congratulate you once again on this note, for being part of our winners

selected this year. This promotion was set-up to encourage the active users of the

Google search engine and the Google ancillary services.

  Hence we do believe with your winning prize, you will continue to be active and

patronage to the Google search engine. Google is now the biggest search engine

worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search

engine, we ran an online e-mail beta test which your email address won £450,000.00.

We wish to formally announce to you that you have successfully passed the

requirements, statutory obligations, verifications, validations and satisfactory report

Test conducted for all online winners.

You are advised to contact your Foreign Transfer Manager with the following

details to avoid unnecessary delay and complications:

      VERIFICATION AND FUNDS RELEASE FORM.

(1) Your contact address.

(2) Your Tel/Fax numbers.

(3) Your Nationality/Country.

(4) Your Full Name.

(5) Occupation/Age.

(6) Your Preferred Method of Receiving Your Prize (Bank Transfer)

Doctor Frank Smith

Email  frank.smith@ciudad.com.ar       Tell:  +447024044903

   The Google Promotion Award Team has discovered a huge number of double

Claims due to winners informing close friends relatives and third parties

about their winning and also sharing their pin numbers. As a result of this,

these friends try to claim the lottery on behalf of the real winners. The

Google Promotion Award Team has reached a decision from headquarters that

any double claim discovered by the Lottery Board will result to the

canceling of that particular winning, making a loss for both the double

claimer and the real winner, as it is taken that the real winner was the

informer to the double claimer about the lottery. So you are hereby strongly

advised once more to keep your winnings strictly confidential until you

claim your prize.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Frank Smith.

©2010 Google Corporations

To learn more about this make a research or check the link below:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=20936ee9483cbebd&fid=20936ee9483cbebd00047e53015e6052&hl=en

It looks like authentic and they are using the Google domain name. How this thing happened? Why they do not want others to get informed when you received the notification?

Better to Lose Thousands of Dollars than to Suffer from Identity Scam

Scam about identity of a particular person being used by other individual or syndicate has been there even before the introduction of internet. As the technology advances the scammers in general also become sophisticated. In the past years they could get your personal information through monitoring or keep spying a particular subject. One of the known traditional ways of getting your personal information by fraudster is by conducting survey either personally meet you up using other party surveyor, through telephonic conversation or through courier. Actually there were many ways that had been used before and some are still being used in today’s digital world.

At present most of the scams are made by the use of internet as gateway. Using this technology they can shoot many birds at the same time using with less effort. Imagine if they can fool you with a dollar-cost while fooling another 99 internet users at the same time in a day? The scammer has earned USD 100 in a day or USD 3,000 in a month. What if these 100 internet users (including you) have unwittingly released USD 1,000 each because they had been persuaded by scammers? It’s a huge amount of money for an organization engaged in fraudulent acts!

Identity scam is not just about using your personal data it might be by using other personal records or identity of a person related to you and you as their target to be a victim. Today, those experts in this kind of scam usually hire hackers to get information about a particular person. Once they have already hacked personal data or files they will plan on how they could get money either by threat or by other ways. Sometimes they use someone’s personal information and by telling it to you confidently then you will get convinced that he is your friend or relative seeking immediate help or attention. Fraudsters sometimes also use automation through internet. You are probably not aware that you had filled up a form or registered at unreliable website.

Automated scams usually come from unsolicited emails or the so-called spam mails. Once you have made reply to it then it will be their opportunity to revert to you automatically with the pre-written letters until you will be asked for money. Aside from stealing money from you they have already stolen your personal file. One of the best examples to get you persuaded to disclose your personal information is through a spam mail that you are encouraged to apply for a country or company with high-paying jobs. By giving your CV they will know where you worked or presently working for. They surely will get your birthday, even your middle name and your father’s full name. The information would be sufficient enough for them to plan on how to fool you in the future. If you have realized that you have done it before you need to be cautious. Stealing personal information about you has greater damage than getting scammed for few thousands of dollars so beware of identity theft. They can use it against your advantage. You could be vulnerable to credit card fraud.

Prevention is the best option so every time you fill up with your personal information or registering in a website make sure that they are trusted and reliable. If the damage has been done all you have to do is to be careful and always seek for doubts. Think negatively about any propositions or hot offer! Remember that in order for scammers to succeed are by winning your heart, have full control over your feelings and your impulsiveness in making decisions.