SCAM: Dreamcast.com

[Elven6]

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

[Christuserloeser]

I'm assuming you didn't catch the " " '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

Nah just trolling

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:

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

March 16 2005 - Last known date it still pointed to Sega.com
August 28 2005 - Generic $#@!ty search page
April 24 2006 - To a different site...
Feb 16 2007 - 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 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

[Christuserloeser]

SegaMark posted this at AssemblerGames:

Anyway:

http://japanese.engadget.com/2008/03...-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=20...16-maiall-game