We regret to inform you that you did not win the Yahoo! lottery. Because there is no Yahoo! lottery. Please don't send us money to claim your "winnings."

Like other highly visible brands, ours is a tempting one for fraudsters to hitch their wagons to. You may receive an email or even a text message on your cell notifying you of a fabulous windfall you've won in a Yahoo! lottery. It instructs you to send money to cover the taxes on the winnings or reply with confidential personal information. Don't fall for it.

First, we would never send you information about a contest you never entered. That's the definition of unsolicited: you never asked for it. It showed up out of nowhere. And although the email may look like it's from Yahoo!, don't be fooled by the sender's address. Anyone with a Yahoo! account also has a Yahoo! email address. Phony emails and messages are also usually poorly written with inventive spelling and grammatical errors:

"So we appeal to you to have a bite patients to enable our Account Department carryout their works more effectively for smooth and sucessful tansfer of your winning prize $ 0ne million us dollars without any delay..."

But, as more and more folks are getting wise to these scams, the scammers are getting more and more creative — and not just in their use of the English language. Pictures of the Yahoo! campus and our logo (which are available online to anyone) give an appearance of authenticity. My favorite is the one with a photo of "Lotto Coordinator Vinton Cerf." Mr. Cerf, recognized as one of the founders of the Internet, certainly isn't spending his time running a lottery — not to mention that the photo looks nothing like him.

As ridiculous as some of these cons may seem, we take them seriously. Our Yahoo! Mail Abuse team looks into all reports of these scams and takes appropriate action.

We're currently evaluating new filtering technology that may be effective in catching scams like this. In the meantime, if you receive a message claiming to be from Yahoo! notifying you of a cash prize, please let us know! Just forward the message to mail-spoof [at] cc.yahoo-inc.com. Include the full email header (info on how to do that is here). The full header shows us the route the email took to get to your Inbox and helps us track down the culprits.

Also, if you receive this hoax as a text message or SMS, email us about that, too. You’ll need to include the Yahoo! email address referenced in the SMS message, the time and day of the message, and the complete text of the message. Also, we encourage you to report the message to your wireless carrier to see if they can take corrective and/or preventative action.

We despise these scams — maybe more than you do. So help us knock them out before they hit someone else's inbox. It's a more dignified way to honor Mr. Cerf's legacy.

Ben Baker
Director, Yahoo! Customer Care