Be Wary if You are a Winner in the Coca Cola Sweepstakes

Coca Cola is constantly running marketing campaigns and the cyber-scammers of the Internet are using their name in their latest effort to defraud people.

Here is a recent warning from the good people of Sophos:

Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned of an email scam that pretends to be notification of a lottery win from Coca Cola.

The emails, which have the subject line "COCA COLA PROMOTION", have been spammed out to internet users claiming that the recipient has won $2.5 million in a lottery held by Coca Cola earlier this month. The email recipient is told they are one of only 50 lucky winners around the world who were selected randomly after computers found their email address on internet websites.

To collect their winnings, people are told to call, phone or fax an agent who claims to be working on behalf of the soft drinks giant.

However, Sophos warns computer users that this is a ruse to steal personal details, and that the fraudsters behind the scam campaign can use such information to steal money from bank accounts and commit identity fraud.

For the full release by Sophos, link here.

The Internet criminal community is always mutating their scams - in this instance - we not only have a lottery scam, but potentially a ploy to commit identity theft.

The lottery scam is one of many advance-fee type scams. If you want to learn about other variations of this type of scam, here is a link.