SCAM: Dreamcast.com

[Christuserloeser]

UPDATE - PROVEN TO BE A SCAM.

Sadly Sega dont own the domain and the company that does have affiliate links and are using the domain to get your emails and more, check via comments for all the detailed information, lets hope Sega Kick their arses. Do not give your email to these people.



It seems that SEGA of Japan just updated their Dreamcast website at Dreamcast.com

http://www.dreamcast.com/dc_promo_2008_rc.jpg

By clicking on this image, you'll be taken to dreamcast.com/apps/ucp.php

Dreamcast users can register there with a user account for their console's serial number and will get an account @user.dreamcast.com.

The image linked to above is called "dc_promo_2008" which obviously hints to the fact that SEGA might be celebrating the 10th birthday of the Dreamcast this year.

If you ever wanted to show SEGA that you are still out there playing your Dreamcast, now is the time!

[seiryuken]

i still have mines and its in good condition with 2 remotes, i wonder if u get anything from this????? or maybe they just want an estimate about how many dreamcast are still alive out there.

[Christuserloeser]

I would guess: both ^ ^



Though I don't think you will get anything of physical value, they will probably give you access to browse some goodies like music, TV ads or something like that.


I guess, like you said, they probably really want to know how many of us are still out there.


BTW, here's how the site looked a few months ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070717104811/http://www.dreamcast.com/

[paul3100]

i have one :-) and will sign up to see what all the fuss is about

paul

[Cast128dreams]

Dreamcast USERS WAKE UP.
We have a change to prove SEGA that we dont forget it!!!!!

EVERYONE SING IN

[JKKDARK]

Fantastic news. Now I only hope a new official game will be released :)

[BaldMonk]

Okay... I signed on... I got my username (My DC serial) and pass... But it doesn't tell me what to do with them... WTF?

[Basile]

But it doesn't tell me what to do with them
Wait....

[JKKDARK]

Lordnikon (http://dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8287) from OnlineConsoles has an interesting comment about it:


I wonder what will happen when every rabbid Dreamcast community, every "blog" on the internet, and every message board, realizes that someone has setup the above domain name in an effort to scam the Dreamcast fanbase for google ad hits and affiliate points at play-asia.


input type="hidden" name="affiliate_id" value=380345

This is a scam.

Remember the shenmue.com/Shenmue Passport debocle?

[Christuserloeser]

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=265736&postcount=11


Domain Name: DREAMCAST.COM

Registrant:
SEGA CORPORATION
Shoji Takamitsu (Shoji_Takamitsu _AT_ sega.co.jp)
Haneda 1-2-12, Ohta-ku, Tokyo
Tokyo
null,1448531
JP
Tel. +81.0357367080

Creation Date: 12-Jun-2005
Expiration Date: 12-Jun-2008

[Cast128dreams]

of course i wrote mine.Everyone REGISTER NOW

[Elven6]

It dosen't let me go beyond the I agree!

[Graxer0419]

I have just gained access to my free... gmail... "dreamcast"... email account... with a code for a user name so I will never remember the address...

[Eric]

I registered but after that they temporally suspended the service so i hope to see whats at the end of the tunnel.

[Christuserloeser]

Here's what Yakumo posted at AssemblerGames.com (http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=265775&postcount=30):


It's bull, Sega Japan has nothing to do with this and here's the plain and obvious reasons why.

1. The site is all in English ! (biggest and so obvious that you shouldn't need another reason).

2. Adds. Sega Japan NEVER use adds for anything apart from in house teams or Japanese affiliates. Never in their life would a big company like Sega want Play Asia or Google adds.

3. The mail addresses are very odd. Sega don't use these. I know because I get many official mails from Sega Japan.

4. Sega Direct links are pointless because it closes this month.

I think this is just a way to get peoples mail addressees for spam

Yakumo



- I will now deactivate the links from my initial post.

[JKKDARK]

Damn, but I can't understand. Isn't the site owned by Sega Japan?

[Basile]

I will now deactivate the links from my initial post.
Someone said and you believed.
My information about the site

Contact
Owner: Sega of America
Address: 650 Townsend St., Ste 650
San Francisco, 94103
CA, US

Phone: +1 415 701 3692


Site Stats
Avg. Traffic Rank: 7838
Online since: 1996-02-18
I used "Megaupload toolbar"

[Graxer0419]

It is impossible to cancel your account :(

[SSUK]

Damn, but I can't understand. Isn't the site owned by Sega Japan?

Yes, however someone could have compromised the site and inserted their application without SEGA ever having known. I do feel that this isn't legitimate and strongly advise everyone to keep an eye on your mail activity and inbox, report any abuse to [email protected].

[Christuserloeser]

Someone said and you believed.

That's not the problem.

The main problem I see is that there is no info on what this is about. - If it's legitimate, they have to provide more information.

I am aware that it is possible that the website and the service still are under construction but why publish it if it doesn't do anything yet ?

The usuage of Google Apps, the missing Japanese translation (remember it's supposed to be a Japanese site!)... - All this doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever.


Still, we brought their service down in just a few hours; so IF it's legitimate, then they now know how many of us are out there. ;)

[Basile]

I do feel that this isn't legitimate and strongly advise everyone to keep an eye on your mail activity and inbox, report any abuse to [email protected].
Agreed!

[Christuserloeser]

Yeah, that's probably a very good idea.

[BaldMonk]

Dammit... I've decided to change my email pass... Just incase.

[Eviltaco64]

I think I'll pass. I wish it was legitimate though :(

[dcdood]

i'll do it, *i have one of those non active e-mail accounts so if i don't fully trust a website, there crappy e-mails get sent to a place where i can check them! :)

i wonder if it is legit? Maybe sega will send us MIL-CD+GD Drives haha:) *would be nice. my games would work at 5x the speed of my old DC :) * Never know could be a sign of a DC-2 or US|EU Refurbished Systems! not hoping, but possible (just because it has never happened :(

[SSUK]

To quote what I just posted on another website:

------
EDIT: Okay, It's fake as hell, as we suspected.

I forgot to to the most basics of basics when looking into this, I didn't check if this site was still hosted by SEGA. So I pinged dreamcast.com and lo' and behold http://72.29.74.51/ was the IP I got. It links to a cPanel set up page. I then pinged SEGA.jp and got the IP 210.174.184.7, SEGA.com: 204.155.67.210, Sonic Team: 202.3.142.231. All SEGA sites are no where near the IP range of dreamcast.com. Running a trace on this IP brings us right back to square one with DimeNoc/dizinc.
http://www.ssukstudios.co.uk/_rubbish/dreamcast_com_trace.htm for a report from http://visualiptrace.visualware.com/
SEGA.com is run from San Francisco under their own, internal servers. SEGA.jp and Sonicteam.com are run from inside Japan, as you'd expect.

So to sum up, it's a site not on ANY of SEGA's servers, it's supposedly a Japanese site running on a shared server in Orlando, emails set out are from a dizinc email address, uses Gmail as a front for a Dreamcast email address, the site poses as an official website (including copyright marks from SEGA). It's fake, don't use it. If you have used it, as a few of you have, hope this comes to nothing.
------

Emails sent from dreamcast.com are emails actually sent from a dizinc.com email address, which forwards instantly to DimeNoc. I believe DimeNoc are a hosting company and are actually just the service provider for this scam.

This hit Digg's front page an hour ago, which was plenty of time for the registration page to go down. Looks like the people behind this just missed a literal gold mine of email addresses. But they took the page down, probably after getting a certain number of emails anyway, which I'm sure will get sold on to some Viagra companies. Oh happy days. It was a very believable scam, however. One which even I fell for, let this be a lesson to you all. Don't trust the internet.

[BaldMonk]

I think you mean don't trust dcemu... :D :D :D

[Christuserloeser]

This has NOTHING to do with DCEmu.


- I was the idiot stupid enough to spread this and I acted as an individual. The staff here at DCEmu can't check every newspost, but I should have checked mine...

[pibs]

Christuserloeser don't take it so hard on yourself, it was a difficult scam to spot and it happens to everybody once in a great while.

[BaldMonk]

This has NOTHING to do with DCEmu.


- I was the idiot stupid enough to spread this and I acted as an individual. The staff here at DCEmu can't check every newspost, but I should have checked mine...

I'm assuming you didn't catch the " :D :D :D :D" 's???

;)

[Elven6]

What the hell do you think their doing with all those S/N?

[Christuserloeser]

I'm assuming you didn't catch the " :D :D :D :D" 's???

;)

Yeah, not really. Sorry. - This whole thing was a really disturbing experience. I really thought this was the beginning of an official relaunch of dreamcast.com for the 10th anniversary, initiated by SOJ.

Seeing it exposed as some cheap fraud after spreading it was just great.



What the hell do you think their doing with all those S/N?

Nothing. They in fact were just user names for a Google Apps chat system. By asking for the S/N, I assume the guy(s) who put up the site just wanted to look legit.

- Same for the links to SOJ, the WHOIS info, the Banner, etc.

[JKKDARK]

This has NOTHING to do with DCEmu.


- I was the idiot stupid enough to spread this and I acted as an individual. The staff here at DCEmu can't check every newspost, but I should have checked mine...
Hey do you work for that scam company? Maybe that's the reason, and you killed the Dreamcast scene with this issue :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Nah just trolling :p



What the hell do you think their doing with all those S/N?
Maybe the will select certain serial numbers and send a prize to your home.

[Christuserloeser]

Here are some interesting posts people made on other forums:


SegaMark @ AssemblerGames (http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17738):



Looks like Sega let the URL die years ago, click the dates...

March 16 2005 (http://web.archive.org/web/20050316095622/http://www.dreamcast.com/) - Last known date it still pointed to Sega.com
August 28 2005 (http://web.archive.org/web/20051123233226/http://www.dreamcast.com/) - Generic shitty search page
April 24 2006 (http://web.archive.org/web/20060424124642/http://dreamcast.com/) - To a different site...
Feb 16 2007 (http://web.archive.org/web/20070216231546/http://www.dreamcast.com/) - Current location?

Looks to me Dreamcast.com hasn't been owned by Sega for 3 years... Anyway, why would Dreamcast.com point to SOJ? Dreamcast.com always was for SOA.


- I even checked Archive.org myself before posting this, but I didn't go back far enough >_<




Anyway, I think this one is pretty interesting:

Segata Sanshiro @ OnlineConsoles.com (http://dreamcast.onlineconsoles.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=71726#71726) about a similar case (!) that happened with shenmue.com:


Sega couldn't care less about Shenmue or Dreamcast right now, so they let most Dreamcast-related domains expire. More than a year ago (can't remember the exact date) the shenmue.com domain expired. Someone registered the domain and uploaded a mirror of the then defunct Shenmue site. Since Shenmue Passport also connects to a shenmue.com subdomain, he managed to get Shenmue Passport partially working (all the download functions which had been previously mirrored by the community worked). He posted a message on Shenmue Dojo saying something like "hey guys, like at this, Sega is bringing Shenmue Passport back online". The user would then check he could indeed log in succesfully to Shenmue Passport, and be greeted with a "We're bringing back Shenmue Passport, stay tuned" message.

Now, if he had been a serious person, he would have told people "I just registered the shenmue.com domain and I think I can bring Shenmue Passport online, even though it's totally unofficial, but this is as good as it gets". Instead, he pretended to be Sega.

He registered the shenmue.com domain using his very own name (in case anyone is curious, he's from Colombia). He later changed it to make it look more legit. And I'm almost sure I saw him doing the very same thing with the dreamcast.com domain (first using his name, then changing it to someone from Sega).

[BaldMonk]

Gah... Too many douches in this world...

[Elven6]

Great work on Sega's part, not letting us know about this and all. I guess their lucky nothing severe was asked for, like address, etc then Sega might have been in trouble.

[Seleucian]

I sent an e-mail to Sega about the page, and I got a response pretty quickly:

"Thanks for writing to alert us of this phishing scam. We're aware of it and we are working on resolving this ASAP.

Once again, we really do appreciate that you've brought this to us directly.

Thanks,
Max at SEGA"

At least they're aware of it; hopefully the site will get taken down soon.

// And maybe an official memorial site will be put up in its place as some kind of nod to Dreamcast fans? One can hope.

[JKKDARK]

I sent an e-mail to Sega about the page, and I got a response pretty quickly:

"Thanks for writing to alert us of this phishing scam. We're aware of it and we are working on resolving this ASAP.

Once again, we really do appreciate that you've brought this to us directly.

Thanks,
Max at SEGA"

At least they're aware of it; hopefully the site will get taken down soon.

// And maybe an official memorial site will be put up in its place as some kind of nod to Dreamcast fans? One can hope.

Thanks for giving us this info :D

[Christuserloeser]

SegaMark posted this at AssemblerGames (http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=266102&postcount=79):


Anyway:

http://japanese.engadget.com/2008/03/08/users-dreamcast-com-campaign/

Google translate sucks but seems Sega are looking into this now.



Here's a Babelfish translation of SOJ's response:


As for official reply from the Sega public information:

First, the statement like whether our company is the manager in information of domain management of, has done "dreamcast.com", but, it is not something our company having managed & managing.

In addition, "dreamcast.com" being similar, it assumes that information publication had done, "celebrating dream cast 10th anniversary, the mail address of users.dreamcast.com there is no fact which is announced from this corporation concerning the information of issue" and so on, in addition there is no either fact of execution of that kind of campaign.

"Dreamcast.com" has used, our company registered trade mark such as Dreamcast mark with no permission, concerning sight design, when they are the contents which are confused the customer whom you view, we recognize. Following, our company examines also appropriate correspondence vis-a-vis the same sight.

[wakaia]

Please look at the following sites if you understand Japanese.
This Dreamcast Web site is a pretender.
And, Sega is moving to specify the pretender now.


http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080310-00000016-maiall-game

[Christuserloeser]

Thank you for the link, wakaia.



In other news, here's a statement of the SOA board admin SegaDawg:
http://boards2.sega.com/sega_board/viewtopic.php?p=2111861#2111861



Folks,

This is the first I'm hearing about all this. Although sometimes Japan and/or Europe run promotions that we never hear about on the American side, this whole thing really looks like a scam.

Unfortunately I'm quite busy this week and don't have the time to make a bunch of phone calls/inquiring emails to try to track down who exactly is behind this. My advice is to just treat this as an illegitimate operation and move on.

Finally, although I don't want to be the one to crush anyone's dreams, this really falls into the sort of area that Shenmue occupies. The Dreamcast has a large and very passionate fan base and I (and the rest of us at SEGA) really respect and appreciate that. The Dreamcast was a great system, no doubt.

That said, please understand that SEGA is no longer in the business of supporting the Dreamcast with hardware, software or anything else of the sort. Therefore, although your inclination may be to get excited when you see some sort of SEGA-based Dreamcast promotion, please understand that more than likely it probably won't have anything to do with SEGA directly.

I'm not in the board meetings, I don't know what top-level decisions are being made, and I'm not even that aware of what SEGA is working on in Japan, but I can tell you that our day-to-day lives in the SEGA of America offices are very forward-focused on our current and upcoming games, and nobody that I work with spends any time discussing the Dreamcast, what we can do to support it, what sort of promotions we can have for it, etc.

So, in short, while theoretically there may be some sort of Dreamcast-related promotion in the future, I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it, and I would be skeptical of anything you see until you read about it directly on an official SEGA site. Just being honest here, guys.

-SegaDawg

[ish420ism]

Damn, this would have been great if it were legit.

Christbewithyou.... NOT

[Mark30001]

The Dreamcast.com site seems to be down. Good riddance!

[Cast128dreams]

Sega shouldnt allow these illigal sites.
They should inform us.
Too dissapointing at last.
Fake dreams

[Cloudhunter]

Damn, this would have been great if it were legit.

Christbewithyou.... NOT

Now now. It isn't the staffs fault it turned out not to be legit. At the end of the day, it is only their job to report. Not to tell you what to think.

Cloudy