SCAM: Dreamcast.com

[Christuserloeser]

ATTENTION: THIS IS A GIGANTIC SCAM



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








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 !

[MetaFox]

That's very cool.

I registered my Dreamcast on the site. They have to approve every account that is registered there, so all I can do now is sit and wait patiently to see what they have in store for us.

[Maturion]

How can I register there?

Too badm I don'T understand any Japanse at all.

Edit I found it.

[ScampDoodle]

Well ive signed up.

Wonder what they are planning.... Dreamcast 2!?

Or a free game for all continued DC supporters?! Shenmue 3 would be nice....

[MetaFox]

I really hope this is actually Sega, though it looks like it might not be: http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... p?p=265736

I hope that it is Sega doing this, as I'm charmed by the romanticism of Sega continuing the legacy of their last system into it's 10th year.

[Christuserloeser]

Yeah, it doesn't look too good. Anyway, I've registered already, so let's see what happens.

[Kevin Beckman]

A email account? What the hell is this?

It's also nice they sent me about 100 other people's email addresses and sending mine out to 100 other people.

[Christuserloeser]

Here's what Yakumo posted at AssemblerGames.com:

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've deactivated the links from my initial post.

[ScampDoodle]

Im really confused now? Is this something bogus? or are people on the other board reading too much into it?

I dunno, there isnt much they can do with a product serial number without an address or country..

Very odd.

[JKKDARK]

Are you sure it's a scam?

[FiendWithoutAface]

Suckers.

[Christuserloeser]

A very helpful post by SSUK, posted @ DCEmu UK: http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showpo ... stcount=26

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/d ... _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.

[|darc|]

Official Sega word: FAKE.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/03/10/dream ... ega-warns/

[Christuserloeser]

Here's a Babelfish translation of SOJ's response, posted at http://japanese.engadget.com/2008/03/08 ... -campaign/:

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.