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In July 2022, during a heat wave across the U.S. and other countries, we reviewed an email that claimed Lowe's Home Improvement was giving away free air conditioners in a sweepstakes. In reality, there was no giveaway, and the email was a scam. Scammers were pretending to be Lowe's in an apparent phishing attempt to get people's personal information, such as credit and debit card numbers. The scam email read, CONGRATULATIONS! You are the lucky online winner of a brand new [Lowe's] Sweepstakes BTU Portable Air Conditioner entry! We advise readers to never click links or call phone numbers that appear in these kinds of scam emails. The links will lead to phishing attempts, and the phone calls will connect you with scammers who likely will try to lure sensitive data from you. Scam emails often contain obvious grammatical errors. Also, the from email address in scam emails can look unofficial, another sign of something suspicious going on. For example, instead of an official email address ending with @lowes.com, the sender may have something like, help@lowes-security-winner.co.com.cc. This would not be a legitimate email address for Lowe's. The U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB) has published a number of articles about the dangers of phishing. In one of its advisories, the agency detailed how these kinds of scams work: The BBB also has tips on how to avoid falling victim to these kinds of scams:
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