

Best scam I've ever seen - kirillzubovsky
https://medium.com/expected-randomness/fbd96787075a

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aclimatt
The fact that the letter says "You may have been selected to receive this
special limited time offer because of [...] This is an advertisement to extend
your coverage." didn't give it away?

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chatmasta
Where are the scammers getting the data indicating the resident listed at this
address drives a Toyota Camry? Obviously they don't have the data linking the
car make to the owner, or else the mail would be addressed to the fiancé of
the author rather than the author himself. I wonder if they are using a simple
Name:Address mapping (certainly not hard to obtain) and then indexing the
color and make of the cars with Google maps.

Clearly the data for name/address pairs and car/address pairs come from
different sources. Otherwise there would be no false positives like the
author's letter.

(Also, why don't they just use a different phone number for each letter? Or
even sets of 3 letters?)

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gdix
Whoever sold/delivered the car/warranty/service plan/loan to you sells your
information to these sketchy companies. So they know where you live and when
you bought the car and which car you have. From that they deduce when your
original warranty is likely to expire and send you the scam letter.

In this case, since the author didn't actually buy the car, maybe he took it
in to get it serviced and THEY sold his name, address, car make to the
scamsters (or something like that).

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kirillzubovsky
Forgot to comment on this early on. My current address is actually not
associated with the car in any, absolutely any way. Either they looked up
unrelated sources, or it came directly from Sausolito, where I once got a
parking ticket (the only reference to the current address for this car).
Strange.

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greenyoda
Legitimate business correspondence generally doesn't have threatening language
on the envelope quoting penalties under 18 USC for "obstructing with delivery
of this letter". Something like that would end up in my recycling bin without
even getting opened.

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mojoe
I've received a few of these in the mail, but the fact that they were clearly
from a third party made me trash them immediately. It's interesting to hear
that they don't even provide the extended warranty they are advertising.

