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Baba Umar

Next time you get an e-mail in your inbox with the title “Congrats- you have won the UK online national lottery £250,000.00”- don’t reply to it as it is simply a spam mail. However, there are those who easily get tricked on the first time and they are left with nothing but utter disappointment.

“I thought I really made it to the treasure, however, the disappointment was instant when I replied to that message and gave all of my credentials,” says Suhail Gulzar Wani, a computer wizard. “Now I know that it is a spam, but on the very first time I was excited and waited for the easy money.”

These mails are basically unsolicited, often commercial messages transmitted through the Internet as a mass mailing to a large number of recipients. These often include your lottery number which you never bought and the mailing address of the agent who is supposedly going to dispatch money in your account! And one is supposed to write back one’s name and full address immediately in the reply message.

Says Fazal Mehmood, “I remember my friend who has almost 7 years of experience in IT, received similar kind of e-mail from someone in London. The e-mail contained telephone number as well as mail ID, and after looking at it, he called on the same number and asked for the detail, not just once but many times, however, they asked him to send $100 in some account and then they will transfer money in his account.” He further adds, “My friend cursed them and was very upset.”

Some of the latest unwelcome spam includes jokes and puns, probably an attempt to lessen the irritation of recipients. However, experts suggest that one should install spam guards and other software that could protect you from becoming the victim of lottery pranks.

“I would say simply delete those message and save your time,” recommends Muheet Ahmad, a software engineer.

He also divulges the benefit and the modus operandi employed by such spam senders. “They basically use ‘Sniffer software’ which sniffs into the server and reads all the mail addresses. Later they send the mails to different users,” he says. “And after that, the users are advised to reply along with their complete addresses and credentials on a separate e-mail id.”He says (as happened with Mehmood’s friend), the users are then asked to deposit certain dollars into some bank account and hence they easily rob gullible aspirants.