"You may be our next lucky winner!" Scam - How to remove

“Congratulations! You may be our next lucky winner!” is a scam that leads to a scam. Don’t fall for it. If “You may be our next lucky winner!” pops up on your screen, just close the browser tab. “You may be our next lucky winner!” is an intersection of multiple scams and, if it’s successful, costs victims real money and results in malware infections. Ads for “You may be our next lucky winner!” tend to appear on pirating sites and could be blocked with an anti-malware program.

About the “Congratulations! You may be our next lucky winner!” scam:

Classification	Scam, phishing.
How “You may be our next lucky winner!” tricks people	Promises a prize, promoted adware and scams, the scam sites take people’s personal details and payment information.
Possible issues	Malware and notification spam, unauthorized credit card charges.
Stopping “You may be our next lucky winner!” ads	Recognize malicious ads, stop unwanted subscriptions, get a refund, and consider contacting your bank about it, check your computer for malware (Combo Cleaner for Macs, Spyhunter for PCs, others), block malicious websites.

“You may be our next lucky winner!”

“You may be our next lucky winner!” is the beginning of the template text used by scammers:

Congratulations! You may be our next lucky winner!

Our last winner was [name] from [place] , who won a [item] on [date] with his 5-billionth Search.

Every time the 5-billionth search is reached, we proclaim a winner and reset the counter.

…

Yup, “You may be our next lucky winner!” is a version of the 5 billionth search scam. This is a popular and long-lasting scheme that has been showing up in pop-up ads to terrorize and take advantage of naive users. It promises a prize and says that the offer is only good for 15 minutes.

So, I clicked on one of the cups to get my prize. Doesn’t matter which cup, as I always get the same item. “You may be our next lucky winner!” lead me to a fake Amazon gift card giveaway:

You have qualified to win a $1000 Amazon Gift card!

The Amazon online retailer has simplified the process of giving gift cards by allowing gift givers the option of purchasing and printing gift cards from home.

…

Promises of Amazon gift cards are very popular with scammers. There’s the “Win a $1000 Amazon Gift Card” scam, the Amazon Shopper Satisfaction Survey email scam, Amazon Rewards Event, and a bunch of others.

“You may be our next lucky winner!” may work differently depending on your location. Some scams are localized and use the name and logos of a business that is familiar to the people being scammed. All that the criminals behind “You may be our next lucky winner!” care about is to appear trustworthy and authoritative. They will use and abuse the name of any reputable company if they think it will help them take advantage of more victims.

Subscription scam and other dangers

After “You may be our next lucky winner!” promised me my gift card, it then led to a site that touted HD streaming and unlimited downloads. It also was decorated with some unverifiable 5-star rating from thousands of people, as well as a string of text claiming “Secure scanned, no virus detected”. Don’t trust these sorts of labels – they’re as legitimate as Monopoly money. Next, this ad for video streaming lead to a  payment form.

In my case, “You may be our next lucky winner!” promoted shady subscription sites like Musicg8, Playzpop, Gamepopz, 611music, etc. These are all by the same company (or at least the same group of companies) and they all work the same way: promise you free HD streaming for free, get your payment information, then start charging your card after a few days. You get a few days of free trial and then a subscription ten times the normal price of a normal music streaming service (at around $50). This very important information is hidden in terms of service and in tiny font that people are unlikely to pay attention to. Those who get caught up in this scheme feel robbed, as you can see from these Trustpilot reviews.

These scammy services aren’t completely fake, but they are a total rip-off. At most, they have a few very poorly made films and books that you could get elsewhere for cheaper.

Together with “You may be our next lucky winner!” ads, I often saw browser hijackers and notification spammers being promoted. These can lead to other scams and even more serious malware infections.

The malicious ads that lead to “You may be our next lucky winner!” tend to pop up on free streaming sites, online music and video converters, file-hosting sites – pirating websites, mostly. Many people are there, looking for free movies and TV shows, so the ads promising free HD streaming fit right in. But don’t get caught up in that. “You may be our next lucky winner!” and the related websites are never legitimate.

How to avoid “You may be our next lucky winner!”

Features of a scam

When you see “You may be our next lucky winner!” or another page offering you a prize, it’s most likely a scam. Here are a few features that dangerous sites like “You may be our next lucky winner!” share:

• Shady URL. In my case, the address of “You may be our next lucky winner!” page was on Trusteddeals.net, an unknown site that has no privacy policy and no terms of service.
• Comments and recent winners. “You may be our next lucky winner!” and other scams show comments and recent winners to appear more legitimate. They often copy the look of Facebook comments and are uninteractive – you can’t like, reply, or check the person’s profile. The comments look recent but if you reload the You may be our next lucky winner!” page, they don’t get updated.
• Timers. “You may be our next lucky winner!” presents with multiple timers (15 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute). This stresses people out and makes them less willing to reach out for help.
• Finally, “You may be our next lucky winner!” opens a page to either install some adware (like Speedomizer) or a form to fill in with one’s personal information and credit card details.

Maybe the prize that “You may be our next lucky winner!” promises makes people feel like they have to do everything and follow every instruction to get that phone/cash prize/gift card. Most of the time, such prizes are just scams that should be ignored.

How to deal with “You may be our next lucky winner!”

When you’re confronted with a page saying “Congratulations! You may be our next lucky winner!” or asking for your credit card information when you didn’t buy anything, close it immediately. As long as you did not download anything or submit your personal information, you’re safe.

If you did fall for the subscription scam, ask for a refund, cancel the subscription, and consider contacting your bank and telling them what happened.

If you downloaded and installed something at or around the time that “You may be our next lucky winner!” showed up, remove it and scan your device with an antivirus application (Combo Cleaner for macOS, Spyhunter for Windows, and others). If any malware is found, remove it.

Be careful on pirating sites. If you often have to deal with annoying ads, make sure that no adware is on your computer. Consider getting an anti-malware app or an adware program to block malicious sites for you. Or stick to legal websites, as those do not promote malicious websites (at least, not intentionally).

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