Nigerian Spam

Spammers are now using the lure of a BMW car to grab users into falling for their latest scam, security firm Sophos is warning on the same. The spam emails state, which the recipients has won a BMW lottery and are entitled to €950,000 and a brand new BMW 5 Series car.
The fake message advises recipients to get in touch with the 'claims department' and includes a fake corporate address, email address and telephone number as well to enhance the legality of the ploy.

Sophos researchers believe that these emails are a variant of the frequent Nigerian 419 scams, which fools innocent users into believing that large amounts of money would be transferred into their own bank accounts. The scam is in fact designed to steal bank account information or to demand a 'handling fee' for the money transfer.

Sophos noted that this is not actually the first time a major car manufacturer has been used in an email scam. Emails claiming are to be from a Volkswagen lottery were spammed out to computer users worldwide during the year 2006.

There is little that BMW could do to prevent its name being used in this manner, and to email users who take the attractive risk handing over their personal details to fraudsters.

"The only way to stop the circulation of these messages is for users to stop responding."