7316022488 Phone Number and the Fake Best Buy Gift Card

Did you receive a text from the phone number 731-602-2488, telling you that you had won a prize? So did we! Do you want to know if it’s a scam? What do you think it is? Read on and we’ll give you the lowdown on this number and website.

The text we received read:

Your entry last month as Won!! Goto http://free-bestbuy.com and enter your Winning Code: XXXX to claim your free $1000 BestBuy Gift Card

(I replaced a number with XXXX, because I don’t know if that number identifies me in any way.)

A Whois on the website tells us that it was only created on April 24, 2012. So obviously this is a fly-by-night operation. If we delve a little further – this time by viewing the page source on the website, we see references to prizecenterdirect.us, which was created on February 5 of this year. That site appears to be offline, but viewing the source of a cached copy reveals that it was almost identical to the site referenced in the text. It’s also worth noting that the “2174 people like us on Facebook” is fake, and was identical on the older prizecenterdirect.us site.

This “offer” is hauntingly like the Wal-Mart Gift Card scam that was floating around last month. Read up on that one here to see the similarities. You’re best off not responding and not visiting their website.

It should also be noted that in the source code, we find the following link:

http://tracking.cpakingdom.com/aff_c?offer_id=600&aff_id=1620

Visiting Canada-based cpakingdom.com shows us that this website’s motto is “Where Affiliates Are King.” Need we go any further? This is no more than some bait and switch affiliate marketing scam.

Don’t answer. Don’t call back. Don’t click the links. Don’t believe it.

Their privacy policy, for what it’s worth, reads:

I let the timer count down to zero, refreshed the page - and had 5 minutes left. Again.

Information We Share This Privacy Policy applies to consumers that have signed up on the prizecenterdirect.us website. We may sell, brand or share your personal information that you supply to us with other 3rd party businesses so they can bring selected retail opportunities via direct mail, e-mail, SMS text messaging, telemarketing, pre-recorded messages, or automated attendant telemarketing. These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation and email marketing. For example, if you express interest in a particular product or service, you may be contacted by telephone regarding that particular product or service. prizecenterdirect.us collects minimal demographic and personally identifiable information from many users. This information is aggregated and analyzed to help us tailor future offers and to help our marketing partners and advertising agencies understand the demographics of our customers in order to evaluate the potential effectiveness and profitability of doing business with us. Part of our business model involves sharing personally identifiable information, such as name and address, with third-party marketing concerns. While prizecenterdirect.us cannot control the practices of our advertisers and third-party marketers, we endeavor at all times to do business with reputable partners who also follow a best practices model regarding your privacy.

All information provided to prizecenterdirect.us by the users of this site may be used to support our suppression, validation and enhancement services to other marketing companies, advertising agencies, compilers and data companies.