…at least, according to this email I received. See if you can spot the cues that made me suspect that it might not be entirely genuine…

I reckon there are three clues in the header alone.

From: “UK National Lottery” auto@[obscured].com
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 16:55:56 +0000
To:
Subject: [Spam] Results 2009

First, the email address used isn’t from the domain used by the national lottery (even if it was, this wouldn’t necessarily mean it was genuine, as they can be spoofed). Secondly, my email client has identified it as probable spam. And the most telling is that it is not to me. I’ve been included in the BCC box, meaning that I can’t see exactly who the email has been sent to. This is probably because they have sent this one email to a considerable number of people.

They have actually used the correct postal address information for the National Lottery, so I’ll give them a point there, but then they start being a bit dodgy again…

The National Lottery Day wishes to inform you that you have won the sum of £900.000.00(Nine Hundred Thousand pound Only). The National Lottery Day. draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 13 lucky emails of individual and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search. No tickets were sold

Okay, where do I start here? I reckon seven clues in this paragraph that it was spam. First is this new invention The National Lottery Day, which I’ve never heard of before. Secondly, what is common practice in the UK for spacing out large numbers is to use either a space or a comma. A stop is rarely used to indicate a thousand separator in countries which use a stop as the decimal separator, because of obvious confusion.

Third and fourth, there’s “Thousand pound Only”. Here, I’d suggest two cues: we would normally use pounds, and it also seems odd that the word pound is the only one not capitalised.
Fifth is the full stop after the second National Lottery Day which means the uncapitalised word ‘draws’ begins a sentence. Sixth you’ve got the suggestion that the draws were made from a list which only had thirteen emails on it in the first place — as opposed to the idea that 13 winners were chosen from a much larger list.

Seventh is really the key one. It says “no tickets were sold”. Given that the premise of the National Lottery is to raise money for ‘good causes’, it would seem rather illogical of them to simply start giving money away.

It then specifies my ‘unique’ claim codes before the next bit of spiel… in which I reckon I’ve found eight more cues that indicate that the whole thing is spam…

You are required to claim your winnings before January 14th, 2010 otherwise it rolls over to the next draw.

Prize claiming procedures.
Full Name, Sex . Age, phone number, Address, Profession,
Please quote your Reference number in all correspondence with the claims officer.

Failure to provide the information above to the claims officer will result to immediate disqualification !!

Claims Officer
Mr Greg Peterson

Email:national.claims@[obscured].com

Furthermore, should there be any change of address do Inform the CLAIM AGENT as soon as possible.

AGREEMENT: The National Lottery day and the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the 2009 National Lottery day celebration hereby Agrees, That the winning information written above are the orignal winning information as it was selected by the computer on 30th day of December 2009, And that the winner who these winning information has been sent to,will be paid the winning sum of £ 900.000.00 without fail.

Congratulations once more from our members of staff.
Once again on behalf of all our staff CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Note: Anybody under the age of 18 is automatically disqualified..

Congratulations.
Mrs.Marie Young.
Winnings Coordinator

Right. Where do we start?

One. There’s the fact I’ve been given 11 days to claim the prize, when if you have a winning lottery ticket, you’ve got 180 days to claim. Why on earth would this suddenly be cut to a rather paltry 11 days? Unless of course it’s spam, and it’s there to try and generate a bit of time impetus to try and get you to hand over your details without bothering to check anything.

Two, three, four and five. There’s a list of things broken up by a random full stop: “Full Name, Sex . Age, phone number, Address,” — which also demonstrates a rather inconsistent approach to capitalisation. And why does it need my profession or my gender? Surely these are not actually relevant as to whether or not I’m entitled to win the money…

Then there’s the strangely strangled phrase “will result to immediate disqualification !!”. Result to? Result in, methinks. And although I think anything which uses multiple exclamation marks to try and give the impression that it’s extra important or really we’re just all CRAZY!!!! is worthy of nothing more than throwing straight in the bin, I wouldn’t put it past the National Lottery to think that’s cool, so I’m just scoring one there, taking us up to six.

Seven. Then another non-National Lottery email address. Eight: a reference to a CLAIM AGENT whereas elsewhere the details of a Claims Officer has been given — a little internal inconsistency there. Nine: The Local Organising Committee reference suggests an Olympic Games motif to me, but there is no reference to this at all, and why would you need anything local if you’re talking about a national lottery with a draw carried out at that same national level?

Then there’s a reference to the National Lottery Day celebration — which can’t have been celebrated particularly well in 2009, since I’ve never heard of it. And while the National Lottery was 15 years old in 2009, that anniversary was in November, not December, and there’s a distinct lack of “15 years” mentions in the email. Ten.

There’s more examples of bad language, or uncommon usage: “the winning information written above are the orignal winning information”; “selected by the computer on 30th day of December 2009, And that the winner who these winning information has been sent to”. Fourteen. I’ll let them off with the thousand separator, as I’ve counted that before, and at least they are internally consistent.

Then they congratulate me “once more” before they had congratulated me in the first place. 15. Then they congratulate me again — once again — on the very next line, which seems odd. 16. And then it seems odd to disqualify anyone under 18, when the rest of the National Lottery works on a minimum age of 16. Seventeen

One spam email, trying to get me to part with information needed for identity fraud (I’m sure had I attempted to claim, my bank details would have been required at some point). But when it contains twenty seven separate clues to indicate that it is spam, I find it difficult to believe that people are sufficiently credulous to fall for this sort of thing.

PS — if you’ve managed to spot a spam clue that I missed, let me know…

Of course, even if they did brush up their act significantly — such as by reading this blog and finding out where the errors in their email were! — then there’s still a page on the National Lottery site which tells you how to identify scams.

Right. Now I just need to win the National Lottery for real.