"Toyota" trojan email

I just received this email, which I assume is some sort of scam attempting to collect money or personal information from Prius owners. Did anyone else get this?

Tom

*********** EMAIL FOLLOWS **********

From: TOYOTA LOTTERY COMPANY <info@toyota.co.uk>
Reply-to: yamaha_motors@live.co.uk
To: undisclosed-recipients : ;
Subject: *** SPAM ***PRIZE........AWARD!
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:54:56 -0200 (BRST) (06:54 EST)


Toyota Car Promotions Department
110 Marylebone High Street,
London W1U 4RY.
CVR-nr. 25554493.


This is to inform you that have been selected for a Cash prize of
£600,000.00.(Six Hundred Thousand Great British Pounds) and a brand new
Toyota Prius car International programs held 2008 in London Uk.

You can view our website to view your car
(2009 Toyota Prius Hybrid)

Description Of New Toyota Car to be Shipped to you.
Miles:New.......................Doors:4 doors or more
Transmission:Automatic............Interior:Tan
Engine:4 - Cyl....................Year:2008
Warranty:Existing.................Cruise Control
Title:Clear.......................Exterior:Red
Condition:New.....................Engine: 1.9L DOHC MPFI VVT-i
16-valve 4-cyl engine w/integ
CD Player.........................Side Airbags
Passenger Airbag..................Driver Airbag
Anti-Lock Brakes..................Air Conditioning
Power Windows.....................Power Locks

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our
computerized email selection system(ess) from a database of over 250,000
email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world.This Toyota car
Lottery is approved by the British Gaming Board and also Licensed by The
International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR).Thispromotional car
lottery is the tenth of its kind and we intend to sensitize the public.

To begin the processing of your prize you are to contact your claims
officer through our accredited Prize Transferagents as stated below:

Mr.Kelly White
110 Marylebone High Street,
London W1U 4RY.
Email: mr_kellywhite@hotmail.com
Phone Number: +44 703-592-0517

When contacting him, please provide him with your secret pin code Y7448500
and your reference number 799BV90.You are also advised to provide him with
the under listed information as soon as possible:

CLAIMS REQUIREMENT:
1.Name in full :
2.Address :
3.Nationality :
4.Age :
5.Sex :
6.Occupation:
7.Phone/Fax:
8.Present Country:

If you do not contact your claims agent within 7 working days of this
notification,your winnings would be revoked.Winners are advised to keep
their winning details/information from the public to avoid fraudulent
claim (IMPORTANT) pending the transfer/claim by Winner.

Accept my hearty congratulations once again!

Regards
Mr. Tedy Lee
Lottery Manager.

Tom,

I did not receive that e-Mail. I guess you must really be the lucky winner.

Does the 1.9 L ICE make up for the driver's and passenger's airbags being installed on the 'wrong' side?

Norm

Yes, please

At least, that is how I would respond. Just that question answered

Sometimes its fun to be evil

If it did go to Prius owners, it does beg the question: how did anyone obtain such an email listing?

I didn't get that email.

Darn. You have ALL the FUN!

It does not look like that spam was written by a UK native.

I especially like the part that says, "Four doors or more"

Like they're not sure.

Oops!! You blew it when you posted your secret pin number, etc..

Now if you submit, they'll take all your information and give you nothing. Now I'll get it.

Generally, I (probably as you do) trust nothing of this nature coming in email. If they're giving away 600,000 pounds they could afford to send a registered letter.

However, I'd do a search for Yamaha Motors (if that's what it is), check to see if they are a legitimate business, and contact them by other means to see if it's real. I can't believe it is.

Why does one of the individuals have a hotmail account? Can't they afford anything else within the company?

Dave M.

I never believe anything of this nature. As you said, something like this comes by certified mail or Ed McMahon standing at your door with a TV crew. I only posted this to warn others, and for comic value.

Tom

I suspected as much. I've gotten a number of the "Nigerian" (some actually had a Nigerian address) email things. I was tempted to reply with phony information, but never have. If everyone who received these send phony info back, would they give up?

Dave M.

No, never respond to a spam email or click on any link in a spam email. Doing either will alert the spammer that they've found a live target, even just a live email address or ip address has a value that a spammer can sell to another criminal.

There are a fair number of people who toy with these spammers as a hobby. Their online forums are full of discussion about what is legal and how far you can go messing with them before the law comes and gets you for doing something illegal. It sounds like fun, but I have enough hobbies and time wasters as it is (as shown by my involvement with PriusChat).

Tom

They can't even get the spec of the Prius right. 1.9L engine haha

I don't believe it. :jaw: I got one of those purportedly from Toyota Asia Region. It was much along the same lines, given away by the return mail being a hotmail account. I got it about two or three weeks ago in what I refer as my "dumb" mail account - this is the mail account that I use for any sign-ups to different web sites. So far, it has been a one-off. Not seen any other spams on the account, so it does question where they got the mail account from.

Maybe we are just a little more noticable on these things as we know Toyota.

Well, if you count the hatch there are five doors.

Another scam may happen when you list a car for sale; I did this recently. I received a nice long e-mail to the effect that the sender was interested in buying the car but out of the country, wanted me to hold the car for him for 30 days and was willing to pay an extra $3K over my asking price for that privilege. I wrote back and said send me a $3K cashier's check drawn on a CA bank within one week, as payment for your non-refundable option to buy my car, to expire after the 30 day period. Never heard further from that joker.

The trouble is, that in my case they already know. University faculty and staff have online published email addresses. I get at least 200 spams a day. Fortunately most now get filtered in a junk email folder. I used to look at them just to see if there were any legitimate emails in there. Only one I found was actually legitimate. It was from the president of the university. I haven't looked at the junk email folder in ages, and empty it when it gets up to about 1000. I actually get a number of junk emails from "myself" and a number that are addressed to names similar but not the same as mine.

My first experience with phishing was a few years back (2 - 5 years). An email from CitiBank asked me to update my account information. Even though it looked very official, I didn't have a CitiBank account. That sort of clued me in to phishing. If they had happened to use a bank that I actually used, they might have caught me.

A lot of times, if they provide a link you can see that it's phony by holding your mouse pointer over the link and the actual link shows at the bottom of your web browser. I've seen links that actually are from high school students supposedly from banks.

Even then you're not guaranteed, since they make up site names that have a real financial institution's site as a part of the name.
I don't know what can be done about that, short of making the "organization" responsible for site names to not make it possible to have a site name with any legitimate company name as a part of it, unless it can confirm that it's actually a site of the company in question. Anyone attempting to set up such a phony site would be reported.

Probably not practical, but if the "Patriot Act" and Homeland Security can keep track of 100s of millions of emails or phone calls, why not?

Anyway, I've ranted enough.

Dave M.

Don't even get me started. It's too early in the day for me to start drinking

Really? I thought you were in one of the more eastern time zones.

Is it ever really too early to start drinking? OK, I take that back.

Dave M.