Enter a Contest, Lose Your Identity

Don’t give away your personal information by entering a contest. Online thieves have many ways to take your identity. One way is to woo you into giving information by promising you will win a contest. It might be a lottery drawing, for which you will pay a fee, or even a free contest entry that requires you to answer a survey or provide personal information.

Enter the contest, give the person your information, and you could lose your identity. Free sweepstakes, and contests offered by reputable companies will never ask you for your social security number or extraneous information.  

If you DO want to enter to win, search online for companies that offer contests to enter, or enter contests offered by local radio stations or other dependable sources. If you do not know the person who sends you the email, you may be sorry you entered the contest. Even if they don’t steal your identity, they will get your personal information and sell it to others who will spam you with product offers.

You can also separate the good contests from the bad by looking past the official logos in the email and focusing on the link to the site included in the email. You will be asked to click on the link and go to the web site to provide information. But is the web site a reputable site? Instead of clicking on the link to enter the contest, hold your mouse over the link until you see the web site address appear. If the address does not seem to belong to the same company as the one sending the email, you should not enter to win. Instead, close the email and delete it.  

Even if the link contains the name of the company, it may still be bogus! Thieves can include the name of a large company and lose it in the string of text so that it does not use the actual company address. They hope you will see the name and click on the link in hopes of winning free sweepstakes money. If the company name is lost in a large string of words, it does not belong to the well-known company. A link to a reputable company web site will always include the web site and company name first in the address string, followed by a slash (\) and a title to take you to a sub-page in the main web site. Any other format is not a valid company address. Close the email and delete it.  

The easiest way to avoid losing your personal information is to enter contests by your own research. Look at the sites for references and company information. When you are comfortable with the site and the contest you can choose to enter. Unless you sign up to subscribe to contests, do not enter contests you receive in your email. They are nearly always offered by thieves!