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"toyotaadvantageprogram.com" scam

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Main Forum' started by joewein, May 16, 2009.

  1. joewein

    joewein Driving in Japan

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    Here's a scam email that landed in my filter today. You may find it interesting:

    IP address 82.107.192.65 is in Italy, not North America or Japan. Character set Windows-1251 is Russian.

    Domain toyotaadvantageprogram.com is hosted with Yahoo (whose web hosting services is frequently abused by Russian and Romanian phishing gangs, but also by Nigerian lads) using a fake identity, possibly the owner of a stolen credit card used for the domain registration.

    It's always amazing how popular trends are quickly reflected in online scams.
     
  2. djasonw

    djasonw Active Member

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    I always like to reply with completely erroneous information just to make them waste their time.
     
  3. patsparks

    patsparks An Aussie perspective

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    From the way the whole thing is written I would suspect right off the bat that this was written by either children or someone for whom English is not a first language. I doubt Toyota would suddenly have chosen to use people with poor english in their marketing arm.
     
  4. CharlesJ

    CharlesJ Member

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    With the above info, it may be fun to play with them, ask why they are in Italy with Russian characters and tell them, you'd like to participate with full payment with vehicle in hand:D
     
  5. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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  6. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    If "eztechinternet" is your provider, you might want to ask them
    why they're not filtering this stuff up front...
    .
    _H*
     
  7. mandrei83

    mandrei83 Member

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    It's a fake advertise.. do not trust in those kind of sites. Nobody asks for deposit.. and if would be so, why you don't make a trip until there and sign personally the papers? :)

    Nobody asks the moneys in advance for a car, especially the producer or importer. This is happening just in case that you buy the car with reservation, but also, sign some papers in advance to have the prove of the payment.

    Some moneys should be pay if you have an invoice, company name and so on.. and those can be verified. DO NOT transfer in private accounts or unverified traders.

    I'm Romanian, I'm not hacker, but I know what my 'friends' from my country are doing.. All Europe heard about Romanians..:)
     
  8. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    Soooo . . . . I won't be getting my car OR my money back?

    :p


    .
     
  9. PriusRos

    PriusRos A Fairly Senior Member - 2016 Prius Owner

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    I guess I missed my chance! I was too busy trying to figure out which model year they are talking about and when I got to step 3, it said I had to deposit $5,000 and then pay the balance of $2,500. I don't see which model is being offered for only $7,500.

    Do you think that anybody has actually fallen for this scam? Aside from the apalling grammar (one can sort of figure out what they are trying to say), it makes no sense.
     
  10. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Presumably these kinds of scams work, since we continue to see them. But what kind of person believes an email written like that? And why don't these scammers hire a native English-speaker to write a coherent scam letter?

    By the way, if you do decide to reply to one of these just for fun, use a disposable email address, because if it's a network of scammers, they'll trade your email address and you may be deluged with even more spam.
     
  11. CharlesJ

    CharlesJ Member

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    Thanks. :D
    I'll try some other games then.
     
  12. zeeman

    zeeman Member

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    1.8 L engine???
    those must be highly customized cars

    :D