Is UNESCO being Used Unofficially?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
I know most of you know about UNESCO right? And as far as I know, it is a legit organization that helps in building peace in the minds of people through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information as stated on their website (www.unesco.org). So when I got an email from stating that it is from UNESCO, I took some time to read it. But to my surprise, here's what I got:
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Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:00:17 +0800
From: info@unesco.org
To:
Subject: Qualification numbers (154/4456/011).
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United Nations Joint Programme.
Division for the Promotion of basic Education
Sector UNESCO 7, place de Fontenoy,
F-75352 Paris 07 SP,France.
Fax: +33 1 45 68 56 26/27
www.unesco.org
Qualification numbers (154/4456/011).
It is obvious that this notification will come to you as a surprise,
Please find time to read it carefully as we congratulate you following our
official publication of results
of an exclusive list of 47,000,000 e-mail addresses of individual
and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer ballot
search from the internet
as part of our international information technology enhancement programme.
No tickets were sold and Applications were also made by national
governments or international
non-governmental organizations,maintaining formal consultative relations
with UNESCO in your country.
This was held on today Monday 28th of June 2010 in Paris France.
A Draft of 500,000,00(Five Hundred Thousand Great British Pounds) will be
issued in your name. For Validation Purpose ,
Please Forward The Following Information as Listed Below to our Information
and Payment bureau Officer.
Required Info
Full Names:.
Residential address:.
Tel(Mobile):.
Nationality/Country:.
Age/Sex:.Occupation/Position:
SEND DETAILS FOR VALIDATION TO:
Dr Mariana Patru on: unesco@admin.in.th or call Tel: +447 045 749 886
Best Regards,
Isabelle Le Fournis,
(Press Relations Section UNESCO)
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Sounds fishy right? I am quite aware of some of the scam emails circulating in the internet but I am still surprised how they were able to use such a legit organization for their own benefit! Tsk Tsk!Let us try to check the validity of the email. At first glance, you might probably think that this is legit since from the FROM field it shows:
From: info@unesco.orgAnd that's a valid domain, which is in fact being in used by the UNESCO organization (www.unesco.org). But when I try to hit reply just to check, instead of having that email in my TO field, it was replaced by this: unesco@admin.in.th. A totally different domain, and when you do some search on that, it is just one of the organizations that provide e-mail addresses for free. Tsk Tsk! Now you will be sending your reply to a totally different email address! So before sending any of your vital information, please be very sure that it is legit. Better be safe than sorry!
Manila Time
2 lovely thoughts on this:
Wow, that is some scary stuff and good for you for doing your research. I'll bet they'd be horrified to know that people are being scammed in their name. Thanks for sharing!
at the onset, when you look at the email address, you'd really think it's legit. but then in the actual letter, it asks for private details that would make you wonder if this is spam. it's a good thing you got suspicious about it on the get go. would there be any way to contact UNESCO about this?
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