Fake contest or sweepstakes claiming the target won a physical prize (iPad, vacation) but must pay a delivery or customs fee before it ships — advance-fee fraud targeting physical prizes; distinct from lottery-sweepstakes-prize-phish (cash prizes); no legitimate contest requires winner to pay delivery costs.
contest-prize-delivery-fee-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 contest or sweepstakes claiming the target has won a physical prize (iPad, laptop, iPhone, vacation package, gift basket) but must pay a delivery fee, shipping charge, or customs duty before the prize can be dispatched — advance-fee fraud targeting physical prize winners. Distinct from lottery-sweepstakes-prize-phish (which targets cash prize advance-fee fraud with tax withholding and processing fees) — this signal is specifically the physical-prize delivery-fee variant where the lure is a tangible shipped item, not a cash payout. No legitimate contest or sweepstakes requires the winner to pay delivery or shipping costs to receive a physical prize; prizes are shipped at the sponsor's expense under FTC Prize Promotion Rules. Detection: you won iPad/laptop/vacation/prize package + pay delivery fee/shipping fee/customs fee vocabulary + no List-Unsubscribe + no In-Reply-To + not protected sender. Trash score: +3. Source: GC1-R24; FTC prize scam and sweepstakes fraud advisory 2025; FTC Prize Promotion Rules (16 CFR Part 419).
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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