Google 15 Years Anniversary Awards Email Scam

Story:

Google 15th Anniversary Awards Centre,
XXXXX

Dear Email Owner,

Award Reference Number: XXXXX
File Number: GOOGLEXXXXX

This is to inform you that you have won yourself an Award of (GBP 800,000,00) Eight Hundred Thousands British Pounds in Google 15 Years Anniversary Awards as organized by the Anniversary Center of Google Inc. held in LONDON UNITED KINGDOM

The Anniversary Center of Google Inc selected your email ID as one of its 20 chose fortunate winner to receive this award/

PAYMENT OF PRIZE/CLAIMS

Winners shall be paid in accordance with their Settlement Centers. Google Prize Award must be claimed not less than 4Weeks from the date of Draw Notification. Any prize not claimed within this period will be fortified and returned to its source as unclaimed Prize/Fund.

STATED BELOW ARE YOUR IDENTIFICATION NUMBERS:

BATCH NUMBER: XXXXX
REFERENCE NUMBER: XXXXX
FILE NUMBER: GOOGLEXXXXX

You are Advised to contact your Claim Agent with the below contact details and forward your winning and personal identification numbers to him:

Claim Agent Name: Mr. XXXXX
Telephone Number: XXXXX
Contact E-Mail: XXXXX

You are advised to send the below following information’s to your claim agent to enable him facilitate the release of your fund to you by our Paying Bank.

1. Your Full name:
2. Your Country:
3. Contact Address:
4. Telephone Number:
5. Fax Number:
6. Occupation:
7. Sex:
8. Age:

Congratulations!!! Once again.

Yours in service,
Mr. XXXXX
(Awards Notification Officer)

Picture about Google 15 Years Anniversary Awards Email Scam — Google 15 Years Anniversary Awards Email Scam

Analysis:

The email message claiming to come from ‘Google 15th Anniversary Awards Centre’ declares that the email recipient has won a huge amount of money, of the order of Eight Hundred Thousands British Pounds in Google’s 15 Years Anniversary Awards which it conducts every year. Further, the email asks the recipient to contact the assigned claims agent providing all his personal details to claim his prize before it is fortified and returned back. As unbelievable as it sounds, it is a hoax message, and a scam to grab personal details and then loot people of money.

The email message comes with a Google Logo to convince people and lure them with false prize money. The people who fall prey for these emails and contact the claims agent, sending their personal details are most certainly convinced to pay an advance fee, insurance costs, legal fees, or bank transaction charges before they can claim their prize money. And once the scammers get their money from the victims, they will disappear without any trace. Also, the personal details sent by the victims can be used in unfair ways by stealing their identity.

Moreover, it is very unlikely that Google will give away such large amounts of money to random users just because they are celebrating an anniversary. Note that the same kind of scam emails circulated couple of years back in the name of Google 12th Anniversary Awards. Therefore, these emails are NOT from Google and the recipient has won nothing at all.

Advance fee scams of this kind luring people with huge amounts of money have become common these days, and in most of these email messages you can see bad usage of English grammar. The scammers use high profile brand names and logos like that of Google, Yahoo, MSN, Microsoft and Facebook. You can read from related stories below, there have been many similar scam emails in the past as well, which used similar email formats.

So when you receive these kind of emails, do not respond, do not provide any of your information, and do not send them money either. Remember the general rule that if you have not entered a contest or a lottery, nobody will approach you offering any kind of prize.