How to protect yourself from fake sweepstakes scams

Most articles about sweepstakes warn you about scams. And that’s a good thing because it’s easy to get fooled into sending money off to claim a Prize. TIP: Don’t!

The other thing that everyone warns you about is that all sweepstakes organizations will sell your email and address information so you get a flood of unwanted spam. They do this because you are exchanging your free information for a prize.

Well, don’t believe that everyone does this, because we don't. We’re one of the few sweepstakes which will NEVER sell or pass on your information to anyone anywhere.

I have a strict policy about giving away or selling your valuable information. It’s in our Privacy policy, and I’m strong on enforcing it.

But if you have doubts about whether a sweepstake will sell your information when they promise not to, here’s how to check.

You do it by setting up a free Gmail account for your Sweepstakes-only account.

If you want to use an existing email, Gmail has the advantage of allowing you to personalize each email address so you can quickly identify it.

To do this, you simply put a plus sign ahead of the @gmail.com with a word that identifies it.

So your normal email of johnsmith@gmail.com can be changed to:

johnsmith+sweepstakes@gmail.com

Now you can check on that address whenever you get a strange email from a company you’ve never heard of because your email was sold to them.

Then you simply unsubscribe, and maybe give the offending company a blast for doing this.

READ MORE: Better Business Bureau