Behind the scenes: How we draw the Silver Lotto Free Daily Sweepstakes

Our Draw procedure is nowhere as elaborate as this behind-the-scenes look at the Texas Lottery draw, but just as secure.

If you thought our Free Daily Draw was run by automated robots, you might be surprised at how much is actually hands-on. So here's a typical day in the life of our popular Daily Draws.

First of all, it’s all done by me. I don't outsource any part of the Draw, so that I can guarantee the whole procedure is both fair and secure.

PREP STEPS

Shortly before the 10am Draw time, I import an up-to-date subscriber mailing list from our email host, GetResponse. That's the list containing your email along with several hundred thousand others. It is produced in a spreadsheet which numbers every email.

The next step is to check the total number of emails, and I feed that total into a specialised online Random Number Sorter. Then I press the button and it gives a single random number within that total.

I check that number against the spreadsheet and copy the email against it into yet another spreadsheet.

I repeat for as many Draws that are played that day. For example, we have an extra Giant Lifetime Pack Draw every day (above), so there’s an extra email needed.

Then I randomise the emails to make them an Encrypted Email Address (EEA).

WHAT IS AN EEA?

Some letters and numbers in the first part of your email address (the user name before the @) are carefully selected and replaced by an asterisk. Each asterisk takes the same space as one letter or number.

For example: johnsmith@xmail.com might be completely encrypted as: **hn*m*th@xmail.com.

When this Encrypted Email Address is applied, it becomes almost impossible for a stranger or hacker to decipher the name.

I select one of those emails to be placed into our completed daily newsletter, which sits waiting for the Draw time to publish.

IT’S TIME!

At the time of the Draw, the work begins. When the clock ticks over to exactly 10am, I insert code to reset the countdown timer into each web page, along with the winning Encrypted Email Address (EEA) in each of the 4 pages.

This takes about 4-5 minutes in total, then I double-check the results by physically viewing all the web pages in a separate browser.

That’s the time to press the button to publish the daily newsletter, and it’s all over for another 24 hours!