You could drive to a participating state for a ticket, but that's not practical. This is where online lottery services come in, or so they would have you believe.

Enter "online lottery" on a search site and you'll find a dozen or so Web sites. They promise fantastic sums with a few mouse clicks and a credit card or checking account number.

But the truth is, only authorized retailers in participating states may sell tickets for Powerball, Mega Millions and other multistate lotteries boasting huge jackpots.

The same rules apply for single-state lotteries with multimillion-dollar jackpots, such as those in Florida and New York. The odds of hitting it big in any of these games are astronomical.

However, Web sites like Buy Powerball Online (www.buypowerballonline.com) and PlayLot (www.playlot.com) claim that you don't need to live in or visit a participating state to play.

When you buy a ticket from such Web sites, they say they then buy a lottery ticket from a state-licensed retailer and charge a service fee (usually $1 per ticket). The service fee covers, among other things, the holding and monitoring of the lottery ticket.

If you win a small sum, the site mails you a check. If you win the jackpot, arrangements are made for you to pick up the winning ticket and claim your prize, because lottery tickets cannot legally be sent through the mail in the United States.

Another Web site, Lottery Universe (www.lotteryuniverse.com) , acts as a wagering service. Lottery Universe doesn't purchase tickets for you. The site allows you to bet on the winning numbers. If you guess correctly, it will pay you dollar for dollar. But there's a catch. It only pays up to $1 million - even if the jackpot is in the tens of millions.

The problem, according to Wayne Dolezal, director of business and legal affairs for the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, is that these sites are offshore and unregulated. There's no guarantee that online services are actually purchasing tickets for you. Resolving any disputes over the tickets could be hard. It would be difficult to sue because they operate overseas.

Other Web sites offer the chance to play in lotteries on foreign soil. These lotteries take place in Australia, England, Japan, Spain and elsewhere. Trying these games is no better.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, it's illegal to buy or sell foreign lottery tickets through the mail, telephone or the Internet in the United States.

It all boils down to this: The odds of you winning Powerball or any other lottery game through an online site and cashing in are slim. When it comes to playing the lottery online, just don't do it.