Security news
Security news21 November 2005
Bogus Liverpool Football Club emails aim to steal money from the unwary
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis centers, have warned internet users of a spam campaign which pretends that the recipient has won a lottery sponsored by Liverpool Football Club in an attempt to defraud computer users.
The messages prey on interest in the world-famous soccer team, and claim that recipients are one of 40 lucky winners to have won £500,000. The emails say that the football club's financial success exceeded expectations, making available a total of 20 million pounds as an "end of year promotion", and that the recipient has been randomly chosen by a computer as one of the winners.
Sophos researchers believe that the emails are a variant of the commonly-encountered "Letter from Nigeria" scams, also known as 419 Advanced Fee Fraud, that fool innocent users into believing that a large amount of money will be transferred into their bank account, but are really designed to steal information about the user's bank account or demand a "handling fee" for the money transfer.
The scammers are sending out bogus emails claiming £500,000 has been won.
"This email scam campaign is using the name of one of the world's greatest football clubs in its attempt to steal people's money and identities. Everyone should be suspicious if they are unexpectedly told they have won a fortune," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Computer users who fall for this trick risk handing confidential details about themselves into the hands of fraudsters. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
Liverpool Football Club has published a warning to its fans about the scams on its official website. The latest scams comes less than two months after a different campaign posed as a winning lottery notification from FIFA, the international governing body of soccer.
Sophos reminds users to be wary of unsolicited emails, and has published information about how individuals can learn how to protect themselves against this and other online scams.
About Sophos
Sophos enables enterprises all over the world to secure and control their IT infrastructure. Sophos's network access control, endpoint, web and email solutions simplify security to provide integrated defenses against malware, spyware, intrusions, unwanted applications, spam, policy abuse, data leakage and compliance drift. With over 20 years of experience, Sophos protects over 100 million users in nearly 150 countries with its reliably engineered security solutions and services. Recognized for its high level of customer satisfaction and powerful yet easy-to-use solutions, Sophos has received many industry awards, as well as positive reviews and certifications.
Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com
