From time to time, you may hear about online lottery offers that are actually scams. Whether it is via a message in your email inbox or on Facebook or other social media, most of the time you are going to be invited to participate in what seems to be a lottery of sorts. And of course, it is totally free to participate.
Sounds too good to be true? Your instincts are right – those free lottery offers are scams! Your chances of actually winning something are zero. You have no means to find out whether anyone won something at all. Often enough, those offers show images and stories of people who, allegedly, won a grand prize just last week. Those are, of course, fake. Nobody ever wins anything by participating in those schemes.
So why do people run those lottery scams?
Well, mainly it is about getting you to sign up and enter your email address. A valid email address is a precious commodity. In some cases, the lottery is connected to a specific product that they want you to buy later on. Advertising companies have done this type of game for decades. They want to establish contact with their potential customers so that they can promote their products to you. This may not be such a bad thing in general. If you are actually interested in the product that they are selling, you may even welcome the emails they will send you. Before you give away your email address, be sure to think about whether you want to receive promotional emails from that company.
More often though, the people behind those offers just want your email address in order to add it to a list of emails that they will then sell to anyone who is willing to pay for it. This is the type of online lottery scam that will invariably result in a bombardment of spammy emails in your email inbox.
Once you are on one of those lists, you have no chance of ever getting off it. Do not even try to use the “unsubscribe” function in the email (if there is one). Trying to unsubscribe will only confirm to them that you have read the email. Now that they know the email address is “active” (meaning the inbox is being monitored by you), the email address has an even higher value to them.
Another very popular way to scam people into helping a company promote their product are posts about the chance of winning something in social media. For example, someone posts an article about a new car and tells you that each person sharing that post will get into a draw with a chance of winning such a car.
What’s their angle? More shares, or even just more likes, means that they reach more people with their obvious advertising of the product.
If the invite to share is for a website, getting more shares is a way of manipulating Google’s search algorithm. The long-term goal is to rank higher for specific search terms on Google, and Facebook shares are one way to achieve that.
Let’s be clear about it: some companies actually keep their promise and have a draw between all participants. In such a case, it cannot be considered a scam, but a legitimate marketing strategy. As a matter of fact, we do this kind of thing ourselves from time to time. And when we do, we keep our promise and someone will get the prize that we promised. But around 90% of the time, the persons or companies behind such offers are not giving anything away.
Is RedFoxLotto a legitimate service or a scam?
RedFoxLotto.com is a legitimate courier service for lottery tickets. If you live in a country from where you cannot participate in lotteries such as Euro Millions, Eurojackpot, Powerball or Mega Millions, you can order those tickets through us. We have agents in various countries, and they get the tickets that you want. You pick the numbers, and our agents will buy them for you. This is, of course, not a free lottery. You have to pay for the tickets, and if you win something, we will assist you with the payout process, which depends on the amount won.
So RedFoxLotto.com is not a scam. We hope that this article has been helpful to you. Avoid falling into those traps built on false promises, and good luck to you if you participate in a legitimate prize draw!