Avoid getting scammed by fake "iLotto" emails

What is the "iLotto" scam email?

"iLotto email scam" refers to a phishing spam campaign. The term "spam campaign" defines a large-scale operation during which deceptive emails are sent by the thousand.

The scam letters distributed through this operation - claim that recipients' email address has been randomly selected as a winner of a ludicrous amount of money. These emails mention multiple legitimate entities (e.g., companies, corporations, etc.), which are in no way associated with this scam.

The fake "iLotto" letters operate as phishing schemes, i.e., they attempt to trick recipients into providing sensitive personal information. Victims of these spam emails can experience a wide variety of severe issues, primarily ones related to privacy.

"iLotto" email scam overview

The "iLotto" scam emails (subject/title "Congratulations:"; may vary) inform recipients that they are the international winners of the 2021 "ILOTTO" worldwide lottery. Allegedly, the receiving email address has been randomly selected ("automatically selected by the United States Lottery Board") as the winner of a 1,750.000.00 USD prize.

The hoax letters elaborate that this is the "46th ILOTTO PROMOTION program", which aims to aid people worldwide. The bogus lottery was supposedly held on Friday (date unspecified) in Arlington, Virginia.

The emails also list the fake winning numbers. Recipients are requested to save the confirmation number for status verification purposes. The scam letters state that recipients must either visit the lottery's website or contact (via email) its correspondents - to receive the nonexistent prize.

Then the letters request recipients to provide the following information: full name, date of birth, gender, current address (i.e., country, city, house/apartment number, and postcode), occupation, language, and telephone number. The fake lottery emails are concluded with contact information, sponsor list, and copyright details.

The data obtained through phishing schemes can be monetized by being shared with third-parties (potentially, cyber criminals) and/or used to create personalized scams. It is not uncommon for fake lottery schemes to also request payment from their victims, e.g., transaction fees, etc.

Furthermore, such scams often use dubious payment gateways that record financial information (i.e., banking account details, credit card numbers, etc.). With this vulnerable data - scammers can make fraudulent transactions and/or online purchases.

To summarize, by trusting the "iLotto" scam emails, users can experience serious privacy issues, financial losses, and even identity theft.

Threat Summary:

Name	iLotto Email Scam
Threat Type	Phishing, Scam, Social Engineering, Fraud
Fake Claim	Scam emails claim recipients have won a huge amount of money.
Symptoms	Unauthorized online purchases, changed online account passwords, identity theft, illegal access of the computer.
Distribution methods	Deceptive emails, rogue online pop-up ads, search engine poisoning techniques, misspelled domains.
Damage	Loss of sensitive private information, monetary loss, identity theft.
Malware Removal (Windows)	To eliminate possible malware infections, scan your computer with legitimate antivirus software. Our security researchers recommend using Combo Cleaner. ▼ Download Combo Cleaner To use full-featured product, you have to purchase a license for Combo Cleaner. 7 days free trial available. Combo Cleaner is owned and operated by Rcs Lt, the parent company of PCRisk.com read more.

Phishing spam campaign examples

"Outgoing Mail Error", "Posteitaliane email scam", "LinkedIn email scam", "Facebook Lottery", and "DENTIN METAL ENGINEERING email scam" are some examples of phishing spam campaigns. The targeted information varies; typically, these scams target personally identifiable details, various account/platform log-in credentials (i.e., usernames and passwords), and financial data.

However, these mass-scale operations are not used exclusively for phishing, they are also used for different scams and to proliferate malware (e.g., trojans, ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, etc.). Due to how common spam mail is, it is strongly advised to exercise caution with incoming emails.

How do spam campaigns infect computers?

Systems are infected via malicious files distributed through spam campaigns. These files can be attached to the scam emails, and/or the letters can contain download links of such content.

Virulent files can be in various formats, e.g., Microsoft Office and PDF documents, archives (ZIP, RAR, etc.), executables (.exe, .run, etc.), JavaScript, and so on. When the files are executed, run, or otherwise opened - the infection process (i.e., malware download/installation) is triggered.

For example, Microsoft Office documents cause infections by executing malicious macro commands. This process starts the moment a document is opened in Microsoft Office versions released prior to 2010.

Newer versions have "Protected View" mode, which prevents automatic execution of macros. Instead, users are asked to enable editing/content (i.e., macro commands) and warned of the risks.

How to avoid installation of malware?

Suspicious and irrelevant emails must not be opened, especially any attachments or links present in them. Additionally, it is recommended to use Microsoft Office versions released after 2010.

However, malware is not proliferated only via spam campaigns, it is also spread through untrustworthy download sources (e.g., unofficial and free file-hosting websites, Peer-to-Peer sharing networks, and other third-party downloaders, etc.), illegal activation tools ("cracks"), and fake updates.

Therefore, it is advised to only use official and verified download channels. Furthermore, all programs must be activated and updated with tools/functions provided by legitimate developers.

To ensure device integrity and user safety, it is paramount to have a dependable anti-virus installed and updated. This software has to be used to perform regular system scans and remove detected threats and issues.

If you've already opened malicious attachments, we recommend running a scan with Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows to automatically eliminate infiltrated malware.

Text presented in the "iLotto" scam email letter:

Subject: Congratulations:

 

INTERNATIONAL LOTTO WINNERS 2021

 

NO: Number / E / 12591871 (OTHER PO Box 17083-28080

 

PRODUCTION: Yes / 79 Games: 9348610 Date 29/04/2021

____________________________________

 

Confirmation number: 2021EU / 445701

Foreign State Cost: Worldwide

 

hxxps://www.ilottoclub.com

 

Congratulations: your lucky email address won $1,750.000.00

 

You are among those randomly selected by the USA Lottery Board as the 2021 winner in ILOTTO and you have a reason to celebrate as one of the official big winners in the 46th ILOTTO PROMOTION program to promote and help people worldwide, which was held on Friday in Arlington VA U.S.A. Keep the confirmation number included in this report as verification of your status.

Draw lucky winning numbers are (02) - (23) - (30) - (26) - (42)

 

All email addresses are automatically selected by the United States Lottery Board.

 

The total amount won ($ 347,200,000.00)

 

You won ($ 1,570,000.00) One million, five hundred and seventy thousand U.S dollars in the third category. To start your winning claims visit our website or send an email to our Correspondents.

 

The total email addresses are 560 million email addresses selected from America, Europe, Asia, Africa, etc.

 

Visit our website for more information or contact.
____________________________________

 

Fill in below:

 

* Full name:
* Date of birth:
* Occupation:
* Country:
* Postcode:
* Mobile:
* Current address:
* Gender:
* Language:
____________________________________

Contact

 

European Lottery Headquarters
Mrs. Johan Erik
jo.erik1944@gmail.com
intl.ilottoclub@usa.com
Contact
American Lottery Headquarters
Mr. Toni Marquez
Fax/Tel: (1) 970-227 4459
toni.demarquez@consultant.com

____________________________________

 

Note: Your name will be stamped as soon as the United States government approves it
Our sponsors again congratulate you.

 

Our partners / sponsors
Euro-Sport sponsors
Coca-Cola Company
McDonalds
MasterCard
Creator sports
Samsung Group
Emirates Airlines
 
© Copyright 2013 Chestbox Ltd. All rights reserved. All Financial transactions managed by Yippex Limited, Corporation 008586V PO Box 227, Clinch's House, Lord Street, Douglas, IM99 1RZ, Isle of Man.

Appearance of the "iLotto" scam email (GIF):

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Quick menu:

• What is iLotto spam?
• Types of malicious emails.
• How to spot a malicious email?
• What to do if you fell for an email scam?

Types of malicious emails:

Phishing Emails

Most commonly, cybercriminals use deceptive emails to trick Internet users into giving away their sensitive private information, for example, login information for various online services, email accounts, or online banking information.

Such attacks are called phishing. In a phishing attack, cybercriminals usually send an email message with some popular service logo (for example, Microsoft, DHL, Amazon, Netflix), create urgency (wrong shipping address, expired password, etc.), and place a link which they hope their potential victims will click on.

After clicking the link presented in such email message, victims are redirected to a fake website that looks identical or extremely similar to the original one. Victims are then asked to enter their password, credit card details, or some other information that gets stolen by cybercriminals.

Emails with Malicious Attachments

Another popular attack vector is email spam with malicious attachments that infect users' computers with malware. Malicious attachments usually carry trojans that are capable of stealing passwords, banking information, and other sensitive information.

In such attacks, cybercriminals' main goal is to trick their potential victims into opening an infected email attachment. To achieve this goal, email messages usually talk about recently received invoices, faxes, or voice messages.

If a potential victim falls for the lure and opens the attachment, their computers get infected, and cybercriminals can collect a lot of sensitive information.

While it's a more complicated method to steal personal information (spam filters and antivirus programs usually detect such attempts), if successful, cybercriminals can get a much wider array of data and can collect information for a long period of time.

Sextortion Emails

This is a type of phishing. In this case, users receive an email claiming that a cybercriminal could access the webcam of the potential victim and has a video recording of one's masturbation.

To get rid of the video, victims are asked to pay a ransom (usually using Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency). Nevertheless, all of these claims are false - users who receive such emails should ignore and delete them.

How to spot a malicious email?

While cyber criminals try to make their lure emails look trustworthy, here are some things that you should look for when trying to spot a phishing email:

• Check the sender's ("from") email address: Hover your mouse over the "from" address and check if it's legitimate. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft, be sure to check if the email address is @microsoft.com and not something suspicious like @m1crosoft.com, @microsfot.com, @account-security-noreply.com, etc.
• Check for generic greetings: If the greeting in the email is "Dear user", "Dear @youremail.com", "Dear valued customer", this should raise suspiciousness. Most commonly, companies call you by your name. Lack of this information could signal a phishing attempt.
• Check the links in the email: Hover your mouse over the link presented in the email, if the link that appears seems suspicious, don't click it. For example, if you received an email from Microsoft and the link in the email shows that it will go to firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0... you shouldn't trust it. It's best not to click any links in the emails but to visit the company website that sent you the email in the first place.
• Don't blindly trust email attachments: Most commonly, legitimate companies will ask you to log in to their website and to view any documents there; if you received an email with an attachment, it's a good idea to scan it with an antivirus application. Infected email attachments are a common attack vector used by cybercriminals.

To minimise the risk of opening phishing and malicious emails we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows. 

Example of a spam email:

What to do if you fell for an email scam?

• If you clicked on a link in a phishing email and entered your password - be sure to change your password as soon as possible. Usually, cybercriminals collect stolen credentials and then sell them to other groups that use them for malicious purposes. If you change your password in a timely manner, there's a chance that criminals won't have enough time to do any damage.
• If you entered your credit card information - contact your bank as soon as possible and explain the situation. There's a good chance that you will need to cancel your compromised credit card and get a new one.
• If you see any signs of identity theft - you should immediately contact the Federal Trade Commission. This institution will collect information about your situation and create a personal recovery plan.
• If you opened a malicious attachment - your computer is probably infected, you should scan it with a reputable antivirus application. For this purpose, we recommend using Combo Cleaner Antivirus for Windows.
• Help other Internet users - report phishing emails to Anti-Phishing Working Group, FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, National Fraud Information Center and U.S. Department of Justice.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Why did I receive this email?

Spam emails are not personal. This mail is distributed in large-scale operations – therefore, thousands of users receive identical messages.

I have provided my personal information when tricked by this spam email, what should I do?

If you have provided your log-in credentials – change the passwords of all potentially exposed accounts and inform their official support without delay. However, if you've disclosed other private data (e.g., ID card details, passport photos/scans, credit card numbers, etc.) – immediately contact the corresponding authorities.

I have read a spam email but didn't open the attachment, is my computer infected?

No, systems are infected when malicious attachments or links are opened.

I have downloaded and opened a file attached to a spam email, is my computer infected?

If the opened file was an executable (.exe, .run, etc.) – most likely, yes – your device was infected. However, you might have avoided this if it was a document (.doc, .xls, .pdf, .one, etc.). Said formats may need additional actions to initiate malware download/installation chains (e.g., enabling macro commands, clicking embedded files/links, etc.).

Will Combo Cleaner remove malware infections present in email attachments?

Yes, Combo Cleaner is designed to scan computers and eliminate all manner of threats. It is capable of detecting and removing nearly all known malware infections. Keep in mind that running a complete system scan is essential since sophisticated malicious programs usually hide deep within systems.

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