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The study, commissioned by Microsoft, shows that 62% of spam emails received in the UK are lottery scams, where an administration fee is asked for in order to release a fictional award of prize money.

Online scams, including phishing, are estimated to cost the UK £1 billion a year, and have prompted awareness campaigns from the government. These new figures suggest that the campaigns have not been entirely successful.

"Internet

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lottery scams are one of the fastest growing areas of cybercrime. The scams are of increasing concern to international law enforcement, offering criminals a low-risk opportunity to steal money from Internet users,"says Ed Gibson, Microsoft UK's chief security advisor.

Because lottery scams work by convincing users to part with cash using nothing more than an email, and do not rely on software vulnerabilities, it is hard to protect users with security software. This means that educating users is the most practical method for stopping these types of crime.

Tracing the perpetrators of lottery scams is very difficult. Some arrests have been made in Australia and Spain, although the source of the majority of the emails is Nigeria, which is why they are often referred to as 419 scams - it is the Nigerian penal code under which they are made illegal.