The Google Promotion Award scam
The Google Promotion Award scam is one of the latest scams that tries to use the brand name of a legit company to do its dirty work. Let's take a closer look at how this scam works.
First of all, you will receive an email claiming to be from a member of the Google promotion award team. They will claim that you have won around 450,000 British Pounds in a lottery like system, where they will randomly select an email from their database.
They will claim that this award was created to strengthen Google's hold on the search engine market. It claims that they would like to reward some of their active users so that it will strengthen their position in the search engines (which if you think properly, makes no sense, since only one person can win, no one else will know about it, so it will not strengthen their position).
They will then ask you to send your personal information such as address, phone number, full name and country of birth, to a certain high positioned manager at Google. They will include that manager's email to you as well.
At the bottom of the email is another section. In this section, they claim that there has been previous cases of where more than one person tried to claim the prize. It was mostly from a family member or a friend. They claim that if such an incident was to occur, they would immediately cancel your winnings and give it to another random person.
They do explain the reason for this decision. Since, for your family members or friends to know that you've won this award, you would have had to told them. So therefore, you should be hold responsible if other people were to claim the prize on your behalf.
Please make no mistake, the Google promotion award scam is a scam. There is no such award from Google. After you've email your information to the made up manager, they will then inform you that to release the full amount of money to you, you will need to pay a certain fee clearance amount.
In the end, the Google Promotion Award scam is after your hard earned money. They might list a lot of excuses and reasons to get you to pay that fee. Never pay them anything. As soon as they receive any money from you, you will never hear from them ever again.
One interesting aspect of this scam, is the final section. The scammers are looking for new ways to ensure that you do not let other people know about this scam. The reason for this is simple, they do not want other people who know it is a scam, inform you about it.
This type of scam are aplenty in the Internet, but you still need to be careful, as they could catch you off guard. Please do your part and inform your family members and friends about this Google Promotion Award scam, to ensure that they do not fall victim to it.
Google Promotion Award scam: Return to the Online Dangers main page
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