Fake charity auction claiming the target won an auction item and must pay a delivery or shipping fee before the prize package is sent — advance-fee fraud; real charity auctions communicate winnings through authenticated event platforms and never require unsolicited advance fee payments to receive won items.
charity-auction-prize-phish
What this tier means
High-confidence threat indicator — phishing, impersonation, BEC, or scam pattern. Strong contributor to the trash decision.
How Gorganizer detects this
Fake charity or nonprofit auction notification claiming the target won an auction item and must pay a delivery or shipping fee before the prize package is released — advance-fee fraud exploiting the trust associated with charitable giving. Real charity auction winners are contacted through authenticated event platforms (Greater Giving, CharityBuzz, Handbid, BidPal) and all prize logistics are handled by the organizing charity; no legitimate charity auction requires the winner to pay an unsolicited delivery fee via email link before receiving their item. This is the charity-auction-specific variant of advance-fee prize fraud, exploiting the combination of genuine excitement (winning a bid) and charitable goodwill to lower the target's guard. Distinct from contest-prize-delivery-fee-phish (commercial contest/sweepstakes physical prize) and lottery-sweepstakes-prize-phish (cash prize narrative) — this targets the charity-auction-winner / delivery-fee pretext specifically. Detection: charity auction + won/winner + pay delivery fee/shipping fee to receive prize vocabulary + no List-Unsubscribe + no In-Reply-To + not protected sender. Trash score: +3. Source: GC1-R27; FTC charity auction fraud advisory; BBB charity scam report 2025; APWG advance-fee prize fraud patterns.
False-positive guard
Every signal in Gorganizer feeds a multi-module score — never a sole verdict. This is a threat-tier signal — it adds a strong contribution to the trash score. The full pipeline still requires convergence across multiple modules + a margin over the safety floor before deletion happens, and Gmail's trash (30-day recovery) is always used — never permanent delete.
About the scoring engine
Gorganizer's scoring engine emits over 1,800 signals across six modules — headers, sender, subject, body, attachments, and structural metadata. Every email is scored by every module independently; the final verdict requires multiple modules to agree and the trash score to beat the safety floor by a margin.
Sacred safety guards — never delete starred emails, replies, calendar invites, receipts/invoices, or attachments — apply unconditionally regardless of any signal.
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