When I get emails that say I've won thousands of dollars in a lottery, what is the sender trying to acomplish?
107984
It is a scam to try and steal your banking information or credit card information.  It is a process called 'phishing'.  If they do not get your banking information, but you reply to the message or click on their link, you will have validated your e-mail address as a valid address and they will sell your address to spammers.
483489
ITs a fraud, fraud, fraud..\n\nThe following emails are fraud :\n1. you have won a lottery you never entered.\n2. Asking your help to transfer money locked up in some bank to another bank, using your account as an intermediatary.\n3. that someone has died leaving behind lots of money with no legal claimaint, which you can claim with the sender's help.\n4. that sender has bags full of orginal dollars, which have been spoiled with a dark stain. These stains can be removed by a certain chemical only available with the sender. The sender will sell you the dollars and the special chemical at a very low price. \n\nif you get emails similar to the ones above, 99.9% of the times they will be fraud's. A lot of people have lost huge amounts in such fraud. A majority of these frauds are based in Nigeria.
502264
This is a classic scam.  It's known as an advanced fee fraud.\n\nThe way it works is they send you a letter/email or phone you and say you've won a competition or lottery.  You're due a huge cash payout!! (with the exclamation marks and everything).  There is a fly in the ointment however as you have to pay a small handling fee/fedex charge/local tax.  It's never that onerous, although inexplicably it can't be paid out of your winnings.  You send your money through to them and they vanish.\n\nThe key questions to ask yourself are \n1)  Did I ever enter an online International Lottery?\n2)  Why can't the fee be paid out of the winnings?  Better yet have them pay the fee and keep 10% say as a 'handling charge' and send you the rest (it's still over 200k).  I bet they won't do it.\n\nSeriously though, if you have sent them money it's probably gone forever.  Your national law enforcement agency will probably be interested in this and you should probably let them know.\n\nIf you haven't sent them any money, great, keep your money in your pocket.
16368
This is a scam most likely originating in a foreign country. DO NOT reply to the email and DO NOT send them any money. A lot of these scams say you've won X amount of dollars in a foreign lottery, but require you to pay a small fee to secure the winnings. People pay the money and the crooks make off with their money. I would alert Yahoo about this.
1041374
Whoa! It's a nice mail regarding lottery wins. You must have already seen those attractions. Kool!! I know what they do. First, they are gonna ask whether you are interested or not. I remember..... they wouldn't pay much interest to you. This way or that, the would require your registration. And a......... it's like this: -\n\n"We greatly invite you to our community, sir. Our correspondence office in your city is going to contact you for the details of ########## sum for money transfer. Prior to this short process we need your registration and again a short sum of 5000 Rupees (~$120) to continue with your coinfirmation to our central office. We hope your response for the same."\n\nAnd who cares for 5000 if there's 500000000. Then you reply and send the money, for you see those registered sites and technical e-mails. And then there is nothing left for you to be done. You see it was all clear and so wonderful, you get up like a model millionare and end like a millionare model. Finally, you get a heartattack and next day you find yourself in a hospital. Loosing 5000 was a good experience for you and you again found an email saying " YOU WON ####################################### SUM IN A LOTTERY"\n\nor else switch on your spam blocker kit........
1102778
No! There are many hoax e-mail messages (such as the one you are describing) on the Internet, claiming that Microsoft or some other company will reward anyone who forwards the message to as many people as possible. Always ignore these messages. No one gives money to anyone for the hell of it and you cannot win a lottery you did not buy a ticket for. That's the basic rule of any lottery.\n\nIf you ever get messages that promise you of unbelievable riches, do not believe them. If you get a message from someone you do not know, do not open it and do not read it. Delete the message.
293264
Never heard of them. If you got an email asking for personal details or saying a relative has left you money, or that you are owed money from a lottery win or anything like that, and they need you to send a deposit or release fee or need you bank details... ITS A SCAM. Delete the mail.
1097743
Did you get one of those emails stating that they have millions of dollars and need you to take it for them?  BIG SCAM!!!!!!!!!  Be careful!  If that's not the case, I would go to my bank and ask.
765078
It's a scam. \n\nThey want two things from you - \n1. Your ID details so they can impersonate you; and/or\n2. Your money\n\nBasically they will either ask for your details (including bank account details) so they can transfer the money to you - and of course what they will actually do is steal money out of your account\n\nAND/OR\n\nThey will ask you to send them money for such things as "registration fees" or "money transfer fees" etc etc.\n\nRemember:-\n\nNO-ONE EVER WON A LOTTERY THEY DIDN'T ENTER!\n\nThere is no money. You haven't won anything!\n\nWHAT TO DO:-\n1. The simplest of all - DELETE it. Never reply, even to say "ha ha I know you're trying to scam me" This just confirms that you have a functioning email address and the scammer will then try to sell it on to someone else - and what you will get is more scammer emails!\n\n2. If the email comes from an email provider that you recognise and trust, like Yahoo, Hotmail, Netscape etc then forward the message headers to the email provider with a note of the complaint. [The message source maybe faked but often a contact email address is quoted in the message the scammer actually writes to you.]\nTo do this on Outlook Express:-\nRight click the message and select Properties\nClick on the Details tab\nClick on Message Source\nRight click the mass of code you see and click Select All to highlight the entire message\nRight click again and click Copy\nPaste into your message to Yahoo, Hotmail or whoever\n\nThe address to email this to is "abuse@(the email provider) eg. abuse@yahoo.com
624397
sounds like a joke email?\ni dont know?
534807
This is guaranteed to be a fraud.  No legitimate lottery mails out cashiers checks or asks you to pay money to them to cover any type of expenses including taxes.  Taxes are ALWAYS withheld by legitimate lotteries.  I suggest you report this to both the FBI and the usps police.
836540
Delete it please....It's a big scam.    The UK lottery do not have details of anyone's email address, you purchase a ticket either in a shop or online.   If you haven't entered for the UK lottery, then there's no way you could have won.    Those who reply to this scam, end up with an empty bank account - so please do not respond to them and delete any other future emails from these scammers.
155120
It depends on the email.\n\nIf it's one that has told you you have won something...type the name of the lottery (or whatever) into a search engine and it will come up with a list of sites that apply to that name and they can tell you whether or not it is a scam.....the same goes for virus hoaxes, other than that I have no idea.
353267
Heres a littlerun down on lottery scams\nLotterys work like this:\n1)10,000 people pay 1 dollar/euro/pound/yen....etc\nThe lottery company now has 10,000\n\n2) the lottery company holds a draw and gives out 7,000 in winnings (and keeps the profit 3,000)\n\nScams work like this:\n-1)nobody pays money (there is no money to win)\n\n0)a scammer sends out 10,000 spam emails to tell people they have won a lottery they havn't entered.(they pretend they work for real lottery websites)\n\n2)The Scammer asks for your Personal details (be prepared! your inbox is going to be full of emails asking for you personally...and dont get me started on what they are gonna do with your Bank details!)\n\n3)The scammer tells you that you have to pay fees before you can accept the "winnings" (and NO,you cant pay out of the winnings! they dont exist!....silly maga)\n\n4)The scammer manages to con 3 people out of 1000 and gives all his profits to a charity for orphaned goats (he dosn't really...he keeps it ;) )\n\n5)Your inbox gets more mails than help@microsoft.com\nEverything from "You have won anotther sooperdooperlottry" to "CHAN U B A NEXT OF KIN" to "Please join our company,cash our checks,send us the money until your bank realises you are laundering money for us?)\n\nThe moral of the story is...If it sounds too good to be true... It probably is\n\nSome times they will help you pay the fees.\nThey will give you a check (Wooooo hoooooo!!!)\nThe checks will be fake....very good fakes.\nYou can hand them to a 25yr old bank teller and they wont know the difference.\nThe checks go in your account.\nYour bank "HONOURS" the checks\nYou send the money to the scammer in Nigeria\nThe bank sends the check back to the issuing bank (can take up to 6 months)\nThe Issueing bank refuses to "CLEAR" the check.\nYour bank says"Hey...you put in a fake check ....wheres the money?"\nYou say" I sent it to [insert scammers name here] by western union money transfer(untracable) to that lovely man/woman/both in Nigeria"\nThe bank says"??? you robbed your own bank???"\nYou plead Ignorance..."Im innocent" etc\nThey say "But YOU put the check in our bank...." and you do jail time for bank fraud\n\nWhat is the difference between a fake cashiers check and a fake personal check?????\nA fake cashiers check looks like a real cashiers check whereas a fake personal check looks like a fake personal check.\nWhat have they got in common?\nThey are both just as easy to fake\n\n"419" scammers....dont ya love 'em\nwww.fraudwatchers.org
1187633
This is a scam, pure and simple.  There is no such lottery.  Never answer or reply to such e-mails, never give them any information.  If you want, you can forward the messages to abuse@<domain>, where <domain> is the return address listed in the message.  For instance, if it says to reply to dradobo@yahoo.com, forward the message, with the message headers, to abuse@yahoo.com.  They will investigate and usually close the account being used to receive the replies.\n\nThousands of people have lost thousands of dollars to these scams.  They tell you that you must pay all kinds of fees and taxes to collect your winnings, and when you finally wise-up and realize you are being scammed, they disappear with all your money.
1157959
I got an email like this that was a scam. If you win a lottery they will not contact you like that. You can report the site but I can't remember the site I reported mine to but just type in scam lotteries and you will be directed to many sites. Just give them all the info you can.  Be carefull of your email.
1051555
It doesn't.  You got something from them in an e-mail, right?\nYou won a "lottery" you didn't know you entered, right?\n\nSomeone's trying to scam ye.