Spammers aim to score with soccer phishing scam

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 £20m pounds as an "end of year promotion", and that the recipient has been randomly chosen by a computer as one of the winners.

"This email scam campaign is using the name of one of the world's greatest football clubs in an 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."

The latest scam comes less than two months after a different campaign posed as a winning lottery notification from FIFA, the international governing body of soccer.

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