Coalition aims to combat lottery scams

Two of the world’s biggest technology companies have formed an alliance with an African bank and financial-services provider to raise awareness of lottery scam e-mails.

The collaborative move by Microsoft, Yahoo, Western Union and the African Development Bank aims to help web users protect themselves against frauds in which victims are deceived into paying money up front in the hope of receiving non-existent gifts or cash prizes.

Many scammers misappropriate the name of the African Development Bank, communicate through bogus Yahoo email accounts and ask people to send them money via Western Union.

Victims of lottery scams involving any of the coalition companies’ brands or services are being asked to first report the crimes to the Garda and follow up by submitting Garda reports to them.

The companies have committed to carry out investigations "in an effort to identify trends and common patterns, such as multiple scams emanating from the same geographic region”.

The managing director of Microsoft Ireland, Paul Rellis, said scammers preyed on victims’ hope and said the company had seen “a marked increase in the number of queries we’re receiving from Irish customers about these type of scams”.

Many fraudsters use Western Union to extract money from consumers, and a spokesman said its aim in joining the coalition was to help consumers “understand how our service operates and how internet lottery scams work”.

He said Western Union advised consumers never to send money to a stranger using cash-to-cash money transfer services.

The coalition has been welcomed by the National Consumer Agency, which said it had seen a huge rise in “increasingly sophisticated” e-mail scams in Ireland.

The chief executive of the agency, Ann Fitzgerald, said anyone could be a target of e-mail hoaxers. “People are understandably reluctant to report falling for scams. However, we can’t hope to tackle the issue if we don’t know how prevalent it is, and it is only by victims reporting incidences that we can begin to prevent it,” she said.

To coincide with the launch of the coalition, Microsoft published a survey of just under 5,000 people across Europe that showed that slightly over 2 per cent had lost money to an internet fraudster in the last 12 months, with individual losses ranging from less than €100 to more than €7,000.

The research also showed that 27 per cent of web users thought it likely they would become a victim of an internet lottery scam which would cost them money while 51 per cent said lottery scam e-mails made them more reluctant to buy goods online.