Thursday, January 18, 2007

070 Numbers: Beware

The latest twist in hte lottery scam emails is the use of 070 numbers to make people think the scammer is in the UK.

 

Crooks running email lottery scams are exploiting 070 personal numbers in a bid to trick users into thinking they are dealing with people in the UK.

Lottery scams, a low-rent variant of advanced fee frauds made notorious by Nigerian email fraudsters, typically promise a recipient is in line to receive a large cash prize, in a bid to either trick people into disclosing private bank details or handing over fees to secure non-existent rewards. The latest scam emails, detected by net security firm Sophos, contain a contact phone number.

British 070 numbers are the second most commonly used telephone numbers in these scams, behind US-based telephone numbers. These 070 numbers appear like mobile phone numbers but are easily redirected to any number anywhere in the world. In addition, 070 numbers can be acquired for free, as higher charges are paid by the caller to use them.

The easiest way to deal with these is to rem~ember the simple truth. No one has ever won a lottery without paying to enter it in the first place.

 

Technorati tags: , , , ,

No comments: