What is El Gordo

[Sailor]

Well I am aware of malware being spread via e-mails but curiosity prevailed this time. I opened a mail from a lottery contest. I now want you to tell me if anyone has ever recieved e-mail from "El Gordo Lottery". Do you know if it is an official lottery? I googled it and there were quite a few bad stories. Should I start malware scaning already? If their purpose was to steal my credit card PIN, there is nothing to steal. I am only worried about the PC.

[DavidGP]

Yes ElGordo is real and a Spanish Lottery http://www.elgordo.com/

If the body of the email message was that you had won a prize and needed to claim by entering your back details into a website so that you can get your prize, delete the email as they were phising for your data, so if you do not enter it your fine.


Not had a lottery one as yet, but I do get eBay, PayPal ( which I dont have accounts for ) and multiple bank ones from time to time, they are all deleted as soon as I read the title.


Dont bounce the email back if you have a spam application that has that option as its a clear sign to the spammers that you have a live email account.

[Sailor]

No there was no bank account details required. There was just a phone number to contact a claim agent. From the google search I found out that previous scams asked from the "winners" to pay back 10% of the winnings in order to recieve them. Of course I ain't paying a cent.

There were no links neither attachments so I suppose there is no malware. Thanks.

[DavidGP]

Ah i see, in that case that phone number would have likely been a very highly rated premium rate number which may have cost you upwards of EU15+ a minute, some can be into the 100s a minute.

but your on the ball in knowing it was a scam, but still cannot harm anything doing a precautionary malware scan on your PC.

[Phantom]

Yep, email spam and phishing is often linked to phone spamming and phishing. What's the bet the Phone No. is some expensive premium call, like Halo said, or involves you handing over credit card details or something. Or maybe you'll just get spammed by nuisance calls for next few months. I wouldn't be buying into it, especially if you know you haven't entered into any such Lottery.

[bigbazza]

Scamorama http://www.scamorama.com/ is a great site for reading and laughing about scammers and scams they have tried.

Educational as well, warning you about the scammers latest wrinkles to separate you from your money, or credit card info.

Some would be scammees (?) have even succeeded in getting money, or goods, from would be scammers. Bazza

PS: Lots of links to report would be scammers to the authorities in various countries, as well. Baz