Nigerian Lottery scam - Beware

If you have just received a text message in your phone telling you that you've won a million dollars in the MTN, Vodacom, Etisalat, Vodafone, Airtel 2010 World Cup promo, think twice or even thrice before responding to such message - It is probably an old trick - A Nigerian scam text.
Lately phone users on MTN network especially have been receiving numerous text messages about ongoing promos due to the fact that the world cup is to be hosted in South Africa this June. Truly MTN along with Zain are actually doing an sms lottery promo which would reward the winners with millions of naira but scammers are equally using the opportunity to disguise as staff of this telecoms company to try to defraud unsuspecting persons.
One thins to know is that MTN and Zain have special numbers which are mostly made of 4 or 5 digit numbers from which they send these text messages to their customers and so if you receive a suspicious mesage and want to verify if it is really from MTN or Zain, just look at the sender's number and if it's one long number, it's probably a fraud. Another thing to look out for is that if you eventually become a winner in the supposed lotteries, you will be contacted by a voice call from their company staff and not by text messages or sms.
What these Nigerian fraudsters mostly deman from customers is to send money or gifts in order to claim their price but you are not meant to pay for anything other than collect your price if you actually won.
One of the reasons why this sort of sms scam is increasing by the day is due to teh fact that a lot of these phone scammers have huge web to sms accounts from which they can send bulk sms to a huge list of clients. It is like the email spamming which most internet fraudsters were once used to but now they are shifting to mobile phone spamming using bulk sms messaging. SO before you part with your hard earned money for any of these scams, just try and verify such claims b4 you take the bait.