How to stop “Donation From Lottery Winner” e-mail spam

What is “Donation From Lottery Winner” e-mail spam

Donation From Lottery Winner email scam is a type of phishing scam where fraudsters send emails pretending to be lottery winners who wish to share their winnings with randomly selected individuals. These emails often claim that the recipient has been chosen to receive a substantial amount of money, typically in the millions, from a recent lottery jackpot winner. The scam aims to extort money and/or personal information from the recipients under the guise of a generous donation. For instance, one version of this scam involves an email from someone claiming to be Thomas Yi Mega, a supposed Powerball jackpot winner, offering $4 million to the recipient. The email instructs the recipient to respond to a specific email address to claim the money. Another example involves a scammer impersonating Manuel Franco, a real Powerball jackpot winner, offering $2.8 million to five lucky people.

Spam campaigns are a common method used by cybercriminals to distribute malware and execute phishing attacks. These campaigns typically involve sending out large volumes of unsolicited emails containing malicious attachments or links. Here are some common ways spam campaigns can infect computers:

Malicious Attachments: Emails may contain attachments such as executables (.exe), archives (ZIP, RAR), or documents (Microsoft Office, PDF) that, when opened, trigger the download and installation of malware. For example, Microsoft Office documents may execute malicious macro commands if the user enables editing.
Malicious Links: Emails may include links that direct recipients to fraudulent websites designed to download malware or steal personal information. These links can appear legitimate, often mimicking trusted sources.
Social Engineering: Cybercriminals use social engineering techniques to trick recipients into believing the email is from a legitimate source, such as a lottery winner or a trusted organization. This increases the likelihood of recipients clicking on links or opening attachments.

Risks of interacting with “Donation From Lottery Winner” e-mail spam

Interacting with the “Donation From Lottery Winner” email scam can lead to several severe consequences, including:

Financial Loss: Victims may be tricked into paying “administration fees” or other charges to receive the promised donation. These payments are often requested via difficult-to-trace methods such as cryptocurrencies, pre-paid vouchers, or gift cards, making it nearly impossible to recover the lost funds.
Identity Theft: Scammers often request personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and banking details. This information can be used to steal the victim’s identity, leading to unauthorized transactions and other fraudulent activities.
Malware Infection: Clicking on links or opening attachments in these scam emails can result in malware being installed on the victim’s computer. This malware can steal sensitive information, encrypt files for ransom, or add the victim’s computer to a botnet.
Privacy Issues: Providing personal information to scammers can lead to severe privacy breaches. The stolen data can be sold on the dark web or used for further phishing attacks.

1. Download Anti-Spam and Anti-Malware Tools
2. Mark unwanted e-mail messages as Spam
3. Delete Spam letters
4. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns
5. Change your e-mail address and forward it
6. Final tips

1. Mark e-mail as Spam

If an e-mail message has not been put to the “spam” or “junk” folder itself, then users can do it themselves in just a couple of steps. Marking e-mail as spam will let your e-mail service know how to treat the unwanted sender next time. All further messages received from the spam-marked address will be located in the appropriate folder already without your help. Here is how:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the stop sign icon (the one with an exclamation mark) on top.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on the Spam icon on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Select this message by clicking on the square box next to it.
3. Then, click on Junk and Block afterward.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and find a message you want to classify as “spam”.
2. Click on it and choose the Junk Mail (trash can with “X”) icon.

2. Delete Spam letters

You can also clear your “spam” or “junk” folder from all the collected such letters. It is always good to maintain your e-mail clean and without trash that clutters even your spam folders. This is how you can wipe it:

Gmail:

1. Open your Gmail and go to Spam on sidebar.
2. If you want to wipe all the spam letters at once, click Delete All Spam Messages Now.
3. If you want to do it selectively, click on the message you need and choose Delete forever.

Yahoo! Mail:

1. Open your Yahoo! Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click Delete on top.

Microsoft Outlook:

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook and navigate to Junk Email on the sidebar.
2. Then, click on Empty folder to clear all spam messages.

Apple Mail:

1. Open your Apple Mail and navigate to Spam on the sidebar.
2. Choose e-mails you want to remove and click the Trash can icon on top.

3. Unsubscribe from e-mail campaigns

Many websites offer users to enter their e-mail address in exchange for exclusive content notifications, and tons of other marketing stuff. Over some time, regular users can subscribe to multiple resources that bombard your inbox and spam folder with continuous messages. This can be stopped by unsubscribing to them. Many messages, if opened, have a small gray hyperlink or button “Unsubscribe”. Clicking on it should unsubscribe you from letters you have been receiving for some time. Note that some intentionally malicious letters may use fake “Unsubscribe” buttons to deceive users into downloading malware or visiting suspicious pages. Therefore, remember to always stay on alert!

You can also do the following to unsubscribe to multiple newsletters in Gmail at once:

1. Open your Gmail and type Unsubscribe into the search box on top.
2. Then, click on the Show search options icon on the right end of the search box.
3. Click on Create filter and select checkboxes next to Delete it and Apply filter to matching conversations.
4. After selecting, finish by clicking on Create filter.

This will lead to all previously subscribed messages evaporating from your flood list in seconds. No more letters of such will appear in your Inbox or other folders again.

4. Change your e-mail address and forward it

It is sometimes hard to get rid of all spam in case of an e-mail breach. Receiving unreasonably high numbers of spam could mean your e-mail was leaked to large masses of spamming campaigns grateful to use it. Victims of this can quite easily avoid it by creating a new e-mail address and forwarding incoming e-mails from their old address. Don’t worry, this will not redirect abnormal streams of spam to this new address, but only normal messages you received on your behalf. It is also worth notifying people you had close contact with that you changed your e-mail address, so they do not get scared after receiving a message from an unknown address.

1. First, you should begin with creating a new account for the e-mail service you use (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or Apple Mail).
2. Then, log back into your old account, go to Settings and Add a forwarding address. In Gmail, these settings can be found in the Forwarding POP/IMAP tab. Something similar should be in other services as well.
3. Enter the newly created e-mail address and click Next > Proceed > OK.
4. You will then receive a verification message in that newly created address. Make sure you click on it.

If you also want to forward a copy of already existing e-mails, do the following:

1. Go back to the settings page for the Gmail account you want to forward messages from, and refresh your browser.
2. Navigate to Forwarding and POP/IMAP and select Forward a copy of incoming mail to.
3. Choose what you want to happen with the Gmail copy of your emails. It is recommended to choose Keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox. Click Save changes at the end.

All done and dusted! Now, all new messages tied to the previous e-mail will be sent to your new address.

Final tips

There is always a good practice to have personal and business e-mail accounts separately. If you are active on forums, Q&A sites, participate in link building you will probably need another account for that. Major e-mail services and applications like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Apple Mail and Outlook already have strong built-in anti-spam technologies, however, we recommend special software like MailWasher Pro to fight spam campaigns like “Donation From Lottery Winner”.