Microsoft, Western Union Combat Online Lotto Scams
Microsoft, Yahoo, the African Development Bank and Western Union have joined together to combat a growing online menace -- lottery scams, also known as advance fee fraud -- by helping law enforcement agencies around the world gather information and build evidence to identify, locate and prosecute scammers. The schemes are a form of cybercrime in which the victim is deceived into paying money upfront to receive a fictitious gift or cash prize. [Read more about these scams in this FTC briefing paper.]
The Tuesday announcement coincided with the annual German Anti-Spam Summit where Tim Cranton, Microsoft's associate general counsel, said the online threat differs from those that try to exploit software code or attack computers. "Lottery scammers prey not on software, but on the hope of their victims – and with scams that can be so creative and plausible, Internet users simply don’t know who they can believe," he said. International collaboration is necessary because Web shysters typically operate out of several countries at the same time and are truly global in reach, Microsoft said.
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