Who in hell is Freechip city and why are they phoning me?

[Mousey]

I was cleaning house when I was so rudely interrupted. Automated phone message... (it repeats twice) says to go to freechipcitydot com or net (I don't remember, enter a code for $xxx free... but gives no other info. No casino name, no nothing. And I HATE spam phone calls even more than I hate email spam.

Who the hell are they? If this has to do with a casino where I have an account then SAY so! Where the hell did they get my phone#? (I doubt very much they're doing a shotgun run thru the local telephone book)

And no, I'm not going to the website right now because I'm pissed off.

Now... back to the mop and broom for me... and the rest of you... as you were....

[vegetagirl2008]

I checked it out and it goes straight to Palace of Fat Chance casino.. Not even worth looking at. Some smoke screen they are using..

[bb28]

I googled it and the first result on the page was freechipcity.com. It asks you to enter your card # to get access to your free casino cash. There is only one page. I suppose someone with more sleuthing skills than I have will have more info soon.

The registrar info is: Domain Name: FREECHIPCITY.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS13.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS14.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 24-apr-2009
Creation Date: 19-apr-2008
Expiration Date: 19-apr-2010

[Mousey]

Pretty sad when a business is ashamed to just come right out and tell a potential fish ...er... customer what their name is. These clip joints try to hide their themselves with fake landing pages, send spam using a name other than the real one, yada yada...... pfffftttt....

Thanks for the info folks!

[vinylweatherman]

I googled it and the first result on the page was freechipcity.com. It asks you to enter your card # to get access to your free casino cash. There is only one page. I suppose someone with more sleuthing skills than I have will have more info soon.

The registrar info is: Domain Name: FREECHIPCITY.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS13.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS14.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 24-apr-2009
Creation Date: 19-apr-2008
Expiration Date: 19-apr-2010

This could be reported as a phishing attack by PHONE. This is likely to be taken more seriously by the authorities, and the call could probably be traced back to it's origin by the police.
Although we know it's just another Virtual marketing ploy, they have made this look like an attempt to commit a CRIME, by PHONING people, promising free money, and they find they have to enter card details to get further than the first page.
This could result in official consumer warnings being issued about this variant on email based phishing, which could ruin this particular marketing strategy for Virtual.
There is also the question of how they got the phone number.

I have reported similar "you have won a free holiday" phone scams to OUR regulator, and although they said there was little they could do, the scale of the problem is such that they have reached agreements for "international cooperation" to bring those responsible to justince (not sure what justice though). This might even mean that pressure will be applied to the government of Costa Rica (or wherever Virtual are running this from) to do something about it, or face some kind of "sanction" for failure to cooperate.

The Costa Rican government do not want to p1$$ off the USA in particular (at least not too much), as they are uncomfortably close to them, and are a poor country who would probably cooperate rather than see any adverse action taken.

These automated messages ARE often done by mass dialling loads of numbers. This does not even need a phone book, the computer just cycles through all possible number combinations, either getting "not allocated", "engaged", "unanswered", or a person to irritate, or voice mail where the message can be left.