Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global
network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned
internet users of a spam campaign which pretends that the recipient
has won a lottery sponsored by Liverpool Football Club in an
attempt to defraud computer users.
The messages prey on interest in the world-famous soccer team,
and claim that recipients are one of 40 lucky winners to have won
£500,000. The emails say that the football club's financial success
exceeded expectations, making available a total of 20 million
pounds as an "end of year promotion", and that the recipient has
been randomly chosen by a computer as one of the winners.
Sophos researchers believe that the emails 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 a
large amount of money will be transferred into their bank account,
but are really designed to steal information about the user's bank
account or demand a "handling fee" for the money transfer.
The scammers are sending out bogus emails
claiming £500,000 has been won.
"This email scam campaign is using the name of one of the
world's greatest football clubs in its attempt to steal people's
money and identities. Everyone should be suspicious if they are
unexpectedly told they have won a fortune," said Graham Cluley, senior
technology consultant for Sophos. "Computer users who fall for this
trick risk handing confidential details about themselves into the
hands of fraudsters. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably
is."
Liverpool Football Club has published a warning to
its fans about the scams on its official website. The latest scams
comes less than two months after a different
campaign posed as a winning lottery notification from FIFA, the
international governing body of soccer.
Sophos reminds users to be wary of unsolicited emails, and has
published information about how individuals can learn how to protect
themselves against this and other online scams.
More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing security and data protection solutions that are simple to manage, deploy and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, and network access control solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers. With more than two decades of experience, Sophos is regarded as a leader in security and data protection by top analyst firms and has received many industry awards.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.