While casually surfing the web, you might
suddenly come across a pop up ad which would just declare you as the winner of
a latest iPhone. To get the device delivered at your door step, you would have
to click on the ad which would redirect you to another site. Here you would be
required to provide details about your background and shipping details.
Taking a quick
look at the above process, it is easy to think that the whole deal is
legitimate and the person who just won the lottery, might be one of the luckiest
people on earth for winning the latest iPhone. However many fail to realize the
obvious lottery online scams at play.
Asking you to
hand over your address details is just a ploy to establish a semblance of
trust. Once you give your residential details, they will charge a few a small
processing fee. Unless you pay for that, they will say that the phone could not
be delivered to your address. So many users end up becoming part of these online scams by furnishing the payment. The company would still not send the device to
your address and now they will delay by saying you have to pay for shipping
expenses. Once you pay for that, next you would be required to pay for special
excise duties or some other bizarre reason the people behind the lottery come
up with. This would go on until, you finally realise the whole thing was fake
from the start and these guys never had any plans of sending the device to your
place. A lot of people have ended up spending hundreds dollars or much more
thinking that they are going to get a brand new iPhone which may be probably
worth $1000 or more. In order to avoid such online scams, you need to ask some
simple questions.
The first
question you should ask yourself when confronted with such online scams is,
‘How did I win this lottery?
This is a very
pertinent question to be asking yourself in the scheme of things. How is that a
foreign company with which you have had no connection in the past suddenly declares
you as the winner?
Did you enter
any lottery competition in the past and is this is the same company announcing
the results? If it is then you should double check and verify.
However, the lottery
scam is quite well known in the sense, they target thousands of random internet
users every day hoping to check and see who will fall for their online scams.
So when you see
an ad like this, even if you feel the offer is legitimate, you should approach
the deal with general sense of caution. So after clicking the link, you will
now know the name of the company offering the lottery and where it is located.
So do a quick Google search to find details about the company.
This in itself
should point you in the right direction because if the company happens to be
involved in a many cases of online fraud and scam, you would know right away
the iPhone winner scheme is also fake as well. This should be enough motivation
to walk away without having to pay any processing fee.
In the offhand
chance, the company happens to be legitimate, try to determine how they
selected you for the lottery. Call them in their office and ask them how the
company generally picks winners at random like that. However, the chances of
the company happening to be legitimate is going to be very remote. It makes no
sense to declare someone from another country as the winner. There is no
marketing rational behind such a decision. And yet, by following these simple
pointers, you can easily figure out if someone is trying to take you for a ride
by luring you with false promises.
In fact, there
are many different examples of the same type of lottery scam, the only
difference being the prizes on offer. It could be some other electronic device
or even a holiday package to some exotic country. Whatever the offer, you
should do some background research before moving forward with the offer.
For more
information on internet related news, visit BigScammers.com and get all the
latest details.
