Tuesday, 31 October 2006

BMW Lottery Winners Beware

Sophos has warned Internet users of a new series of widely distributed e-mail campaigns that pretends that the recipient has won a substantial cash prize and a new BMW car, in an attempt to steal confidential information and money. The e-mails state that recipients have won a BMW lottery and are entitled to 950,000 EUR and a brand new BMW 5 Series car. It advises recipients to contact the claims department and provides a fake corporate address, e-mail address and telephone number, to enhance the legitimacy of the message, the security research company warned.

Sophos researchers believe that the e-mails are a variant of the commonly-encountered 'Letter from Nigeria' scams, also known as 419 Advanced Fee Fraud, that fool innocent users into believing that large amounts of money will be transferred into their bank accounts, but are really designed to steal bank account information or demand a 'handling fee' for the money transfer. Sophos notes that this is not the first time a major car manufacturer has been used in an e-mail scam. Earlier in 2006, e-mails purporting to be from the Volkswagen lottery were spammed out to computer users worldwide.

"Few people would say no to a free BMW, or a huge wad of cash for that matter, which is precisely why these lottery scams are proving so successful," said Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos. "There's little that BMW can do to prevent its name being used in this manner, and e-mail users that take the bait risk handing over their personal details to fraudsters. The only way to stop the distribution of these messages is for users to stop responding."