Should we be reporting lottery and other such scams as "419" attempts or are they significantly different than a "true 419" scam?

My personal opinion is that any sort of "phishing" scam should be treated the same, whether it's a lottery scam or a "Nigerian 419" scam, but I don't want to violate the rules either.

Most of the time, lottery scams are simply advance-fee frauds, just like 419 messages (i.e.
"pay me now to get your prize later"). I think it is appropriate to treat them in the same way.

Whether you should report them is a matter for you to decide, but I believe that you are permitted to report them through SpamCop (I do it myself).

-- rick

They are both said to be "advance fee" or similar (notably "fake check") scams with or without possible identity theft and/or other wrinkles thrown in. Why do you have to decide the precise type - whose rules are you concerned about violating? There are specialist reporting addresses for lottery scams in some countries (note the different reporting addresses in http://banspam.javawoman.com/report3.html) but this is all outside of the staight-up SC reporting service which certainly can be used to address the sending IPs of the things regardless of their pedigree.

Well, I was thinking about whether it would be appropriate to report it to the Secret Service's "419" reporting address... but I guess if they don't think it's appropriate, they'll let me know. I *knew* it was safe to report it via SpamCop, but as I said, I wasn't sure about reporting it as a "419" type spam. :-)

Thanks for your thoughts.

Report em all

they are so crappy to be 419 ))

btw, get bunch of them too

As a website owner justlottery.com I have just been hit by spammers who provide links to my website in their spam emails, i think it a little unjust that these "people" can harm a website just by sending spam with your link(s) in them to make them appear more genuine - i have since seen that spamcop allows for you to respond to these types of "attack"/"spam"

Just to make it absolutely clear, my site never sends emails about lottery wins to anyone and if you "appear" to get such an email by all means report it and NEVER act on its content

Consider adding that to your home page and to your announcements.

Scammers will add your link to their spam just to give it an appearance of legitimacy, as you say. You can spoil their pitch by making it plain to your players and visitors what it is that those criminals are trying to do.

You know about "innocent bystander" registration I take it? SC doesn't list websites but others do (and there's the matter of your service provider if "spamvertized site" reports are sent).