Scam Alert: Toyota Is Not Celebrating its 80th Anniversary!
Author: Emmanuel Bida
211 Check investigations have identified the trending message [link] about Toyota’s 80th Anniversary Celebration and the giveaway of a Toyota Corolla being sent to numerous internet users on various social media platforms as a scam.
The new online fraud popular on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram, is being received by many online users via cellphone.
Analyzed by 211 Check, the message urges the recipients to click the link and be part of Toyota’s 80 Anniversary Celebration and get a chance to win a luxurious Toyota car.
Our investigations have clearly identified the message as an online fraud. Find out below why it is!
Protection and Safety: Don’t click or proceed with the contest, because your account might be compromised or you might be lured into a fake scam dealing. Avoid this link: http://jtyjdg.ymmtwq.cn/fengtian/index.php#1621339177652
Why is this Toyota 80th Anniversary Celebration contest a scam?
For some online users wondering what qualifies the above message to be a scam, below are tips of classifying facts about online fraud.
Fact #1: The link is highly suspicious.
If you closely look at the link, it goes to http://1s7wttd.nodxteh.cn which is not an original or official Toyota Company’s website link or domain.
The links moves from one website to another, which 211 Check observed were unrelated Chinese-registered (.cn) domains.
In addition, the above link is not Encrypted, which would start with https://. Note: legitimate websites will use SSL-Encrypted links (with HTTPS, not HTTP). When you see such links, DO NOT CLICK on them.
Fact #2: Toyota’s 80th Anniversary was in 2017
Toyota Company was established on August 28 1937. The company celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2017.
Below is the Toyota Motor Corp tweet published August 28, 2017.
Fact #3: Toyota is in the business of selling cars
According to reliable facts online, Toyota Company is in the business of selling cars, but not giving them away for free as stipulated in the scam.
Facts states that the company has never offered a single car at free cost, when it celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2017.
Fact #4: The page has so many troubling clues
If you click on the link, you will be led to this page, claiming you will get a free gift with Toyota… and a chance to win a Toyota Corolla – a page that is full of grammatical mistakes, something an actual Toyota website would not have, because prominent companies such as Toyota hire professionals staff.
When you click on the comments of people who claimed to have won the Toyota Corolla, the links don’t take you to any reliable web. Our analysis shows that the messages are all ‘FAKE’ placed there to lure you.
In addition, if you check the code of the comments, you can see that all comments and pictures were manually inserted on the web.
Fact #5: You will always win the car
You can try the contest any number of times, and you will ALWAYS win the car.
Why? Because the next step involves you sharing this with 5 groups or 20 friends on WhatsApp. So, no matter how many times you participate, you will ALWAYS win the free Toyota Corolla. Do you think that’s the case with a real contest? Off course NO!
Fact #6: Website information through Whois Search
The WHOIS information of the imposter website reveals it was registered on June 17, 2020, in China by Sichuan Domain Fun Network Technology Co., Ltd., while the legitimate Toyota Website (https://www.toyota.com/) was registered on December 29th, 1994 by Toyota Motor Sales, USA – a big research that qualifies the message and website was scams.
Conclusion:
It is cleared that the Toyota 80th Anniversary is a SCAM, NOT LEGIT. If you receive such messages, kindly ignore them and alert others about such online fraud threats. Secondly, don’t share or proceed beyond this page.
Note: To avoid spreading false information, avoid rushing into sharing information that you aren’t sure of or you don’t know its origin.
To know more about our fact-checking process, check the link below, https://211check.org/how-to-fact-check/ or contact us via 211check.org to present a claim – our team will immediately fact-check it and send you immediate feedback.
There are now more than 150 Hilux fan pages on Facebook, with pages published in multiple modern languages. They are all scams and have more than 5 million followers. There is a good deal of content sharing across these pages so that the same competitions are run and the same “winners” appear over and over again. They photos of so-called “winners” – all of which can be shown to be fake – nothing more than images sourced from the Internet to which the scammers add phony names. The real tragedy is that Facebook, which is well aware of the scam, refuses to shut down these pages on the grounds that it doesn’t contravene “community standards”. Facebook should be ashamed of itself for effectively sanctioning these reprehensible and illegal pages.