"your chance to win a brand new car" email

[noonard]

Just had an email, supposedly from eFesties, offering me the chance to win a Mini via a website called be-real-winner.com.

The headers make it look like it has come from the EF server, but at the same time it reeks of spam. Is this legit, or has someone gained access to the mailing list system somehow?

Cheers!

Ed

[Paul ™]

Just came on to post the same

CONGRATULATIONS

Hello,

Congratulations

You have just been nominated to be our possible winner

We are happy to announce you could be our EXCLUSIVE WINNER of a brand new MINI.

Participation in this draw won't cost you anything and the car will be delivered to your nearest official dealer.

Your chance to win a MINI. Enter today and you could be the proud owner of a branda new MINI.

Please click here to select your MINI

Selected MINI

[eFestivals]

Is this legit

It's legit.

eFestivals takes paid mailers from selected companies from time to time, to help us pay the bills. Without the income of these (along with other income) efestivals could not survive.

Most of the paid-for mailers we take are to promote festivals and in an ideal world they'd be the only ones we took, but we wouldn't survive relying on just those.

[noonard]

Have you gone through the prize draw entry process?

I have (with false info).

...yuck.

[eFestivals]

Have you gone through the prize draw entry process?

I have (with false info).

...yuck.

are you outside the UK by any chance? I've had a mail from someone overseas that says the same.

=============

anyway, huge amount of flack. I won't do it again, I'll let efests go bust instead.

It's really not worth it.

[Paul ™]

Flak from who?

Fuck them Neil, do what you need to do.. it's easy enough to delete an email.

[eFestivals]

Flak from who?

People who've chosen to see the email only as spam.

To be fair to them, that's not an unreasonable assumption given the content, and something I should have better anticipated, despite me having had the copy that's been sent out amended to try and make it more palatable than it otherwise would have been.

And things haven't been helped by the fact that there's been some unmentioned effects around the email, that was completely unanticipated by me. People outside the UK do not get the opportunity to win a car, they instead get served another page entirely - making the whole thing seem a con.

As soon as I became aware that was happening, I stopped the mail going out (around 4/10ths of the mails had been sent by that time). I've done a LOT of shouting at people about this, and as of now that is still not resolved (it only needs that redirection taken off), which leads me to conclude that scamming people was a part of the ultimate client's wants.

Fuck them Neil, do what you need to do.. it's easy enough to delete an email.

True, but what I want is not to help that company scam people, or to annoy people on the maillist.

But I also wish to be able to afford to live, and now I can't. Yes, things really are that dire.

Edited February 6, 2014 by eFestivals

[noonard]

are you outside the UK by any chance? I've had a mail from someone overseas that says the same.

[LondonTom]

But I also wish to be able to afford to live, and now I can't. Yes, things really are that dire.

[eFestivals]

You should be able to take advantage of that with a fairly wide range of income streams...

all of which I'm doing.

They're only income streams if people are opening their wallets. They're not magic money trees.