Bogus Microsoft sweepstakes emails

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Over the past month I've received at least three enquiries from people asking about the legitimacy of emails claiming the recipients have won large amounts of money in a Microsoft sweepstakes or lottery -- often 500,000 British pounds. This is an easy question to answer: they're fake.

Recently, someone forwarded me the email. Let's examine some of its characteristics.

  • The sending address is microsoft.co.uk-00@adelphia.net. The address was a hidden hyperlink. Legitimate emails you receive from us almost always come from @microsoft.com domain; occasionally a marketing partner will use their own domain -- this we're trying to eliminate. No legitimate mail from us would use an ISP's domain: Adelphia is a cable TV company that's been split up and sold to Time Warner and Comcast. Furthermore, the email has the appearance coming from Microosft UK, so using an American domain seems odd.
  • The subject line is "YOU WON (£500,000.00GBP)! Microsoft congratulates you!" Official communications from us typically DON'T SHOUT FROM THE ROOFTOPS. Also, it's incorrect to use both a currency symbol and the three-letter currency name. This like saying "$1,000USD." It's either "$1,000" or "1,000USD," but not both. And why is the amount in parentheses? Doesn't that indicate (on balance sheets, anyway) that the number is negative? One could interpret the subject line this way: "Congratulations! You've won the privilege of sending 500,000 pounds to Microsoft! Warm up your check book!"
  • The email insists that you contact Mr. Peter Garry, Microsoft's "fiduciary agent." There are some capitalization errors in this particular sentence.
  • There are several official-looking reference numbers, file numbers, and batch numbers in the email -- none of which would be useful information to the recipient.

Folks, were we to ever run a sweepstakes where we're giving away the equivalent of a million dollars, it's safe to say that we wouldn't use email to send winning notifications. Please tell your friends and neighbors that stuff like this is fake.

Oh, in case you're curious, do a search on the winning prize number: 14-21-25-40-40-47(21). Looks like hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have all coincidentally guessed the exact same number!