The Bogus Google Give-Away

Here’s a new one on me. I just got an email telling me that I’ve won nearly $1 million from a “drawing” randomly selected from those searching on Google. Suffice to say, it’s a scam. I can assure you that Google’s done no drawing like this. Add the spam to those about missing fortunes in Nigeria or government grants.

I did some looking around, and the Google scam seems relatively recent. Apparently there was a Google “anniversary” scam in April 2008. For this latest “give-away” one, I spotted talk of it from April of this year. But since this particular spam made it past the filters in Gmail (but not past Outlooks spam filtering), perhaps more people will be exposed to it.

For the curious, the pitch:

GOOGLE GIVE-AWAY WINNING NOTIFICATION!!! This E-mail is to inform you that your e-mail emerged as a winner of £500,000.00 GBP (Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds) in our online Give-away draws. Over £20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million British pounds) is to be given out for this Draws. No purchases of  tickets were required. Participants for the draws were randomly selected from a world wide range of web searchers who use the Google search engine (Googler) and other Google ancillary services. Google is now the biggest search engine worldwide and in an effort to make sure that it remains the most widely used search engine, Google is running an e-mail beta test.

Your email address was linked with our Computer Generated Profile Numbers(CGPN) and attached to the following details:  Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):7-22-71-00-66-12, Ticket number: 00869575733664, Serial numbers:/BTD/8070447706/06, Lucky numbers:  12-12-23-35-40-41(12), was picked among our lucky winners to receive £500, 000.00 British pounds. Winners were selected randomly through a computer ballot system from worldwide users of the Google search engine.

YOUR WINNING DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOW: Computer Generated Profile Numbers (CGPN):7-22-71-00-66-12 Ticket number: 00869575733664 Serial numbers: / BTD/8070447706/06 Lucky numbers: 12-12-23-35-40-41(12)

To claim your give-away prize, send the following. Your full names…………….. , sex………………………….,Location……………………….Alternate e-mail address………………Your winning details……………..