I recently encountered an advert on Facebook which was too good to be true. Latest DJI drones (Mavic Pro, Spark, Phantoms) were available for sale on a bargain price (down to 85%), hence my suspicion it’s a scam.
After a little bit of online research I’ve come up with a conclusion:
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uavhotclub.com (with its sattelite subdomains, shop.uavhotclub.com, mall.uavhotclub.com and hot.uavhotclub.com) is a scam!
I’ll give some explanations…
1. The domain age is only 4 days old. No trustable online store is only 4 days old. Full stop.
This is some extended info on uavhotclub.com which shows a little bit more about this shady website. Mind the „owner” address, which is obviously fake.
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2. The main domain, uavhotclub.com is a default server page. This means everything was put up online a big hurry. No time for any polishes.
3. The uavhotclub.com domain makes use of cloudflare nameservers (which act like a proxy for a website).
This is not necessarily a scam sign but can be used to trick one that the website is being hosted in the US.
4. UAV Hot Club does not have any page with indentification info. Only a Contact Us form and some privacy policy blah-blah-blah.
5. The donwtime timer is fake.
Try it on yourself. It will start to count down from 20:13:20 every time you refresh the page.
7. Now, the cherry on the cake was left at the end. This is the reason why this fake store was made:
UAVHOTCLUB.COM STEALS YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION!
My friendly advice: Don’t fall for this scam, warn your friends and report this lowlife scumbag’s Facebook ads!
Lastly, share this article if you find it useful. Maybe it’s not too late…
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Update 26.08.2017 – Uavhotclub.com is down.
It looks like their hosting provider took some measures. Great news!
However, they will probably buy another domain to continue their scam. I’ll keep this post up to date if necessarry.
Update 2 on 26.08.2017 – more scamming websites from the same fraudster
After more extensive investigations, I made up a list of websites owned by the same person, all of them built for the only purpose to steal your personal info and credit card details.
This is a list with phishing/scam websites:
- uavtopshop.com – selling TAOSONIC drones (DJI clones)
- uavhotshow.com – selling DJI products
- camerahotstore.com – selling Eclipse action cameras (GoPro clones)
- uavhptshoppe.com – sells DJI drones
- uavhotmall.com – DJI products
- uavhotstore.com – fictive DJI products
- cameravipstore.com – selling inexistent Eclipse action cameras
- hotuavshow.com – sells Evanbox Bluetooth portable speakers
- autobrushshop.com – sells Meoro electric toothbrushes
- razorhotshoppe.com – sells fictive electric razors
- uavtopstore.com – sells fictive Taosonic drones
- uavtopclub.com – Taosonic drones
- uavtopshoppe.com – Taosonic products
- teslico.com – sells fictive Eclipse products
- uavtopmall.com – fake Taosonic drones
- aliitt.com – selling GoPro action cameras
- 3csaleonline.com – sells fictive wireless routers
- uavhptshop.com – fictive DJI products
- cheap3cmall.com – inexistent DJI products
- autobrushmall.com – selling fictive MEORO products
- autobrushshow.com – same as above, MEORO toothbrushes
- autobrushshoppe.com – also fake Meoro electric toothbrushes
- autobrushstore.com – same, Meoro products
- camerahotstore.com – Eclipse action cameras scam
- autobrushhot.com – Meoro toothbrushes scam
- curriys.com – scam, selling Fujifilm cameras
Subdomains used in this large scam are: shop, mall, club, hot. Which means you will most likely see in the address bar something like hot.fakestore.com or club.fakestore.com, not just fakestore.com alone.
This list is open. It looks like this is an ongoing Chinese scam that probably made a few hundred victims so far. These websites share the same IP address, 104.250.129.27, which means they are all hosted on the same server, at the same provider (Gorilla Servers – gorillaservers.com) that, if you ask me, also doesn’t look like a trustful web hosting provider. Gorilla Servers claims to be from Los Angeles, California.
Update 3 on 02.09.2017 – more servers and domains used for this scam
- shopflymall.com – TAOSONIC media players and recorders
- shopflymall.com/uav – TAOSONIC drones (it looks like they’re short on domain names and started to use subdirectories instead of new domains)
Other IP addresses that host fake websites:
- 104.250.128.147 (Gorilla Servers)
We can stop this unscrupulous scammer together by sharing this article in our social media accounts.
If you’re aware of a website that’s not in this list please add it in the comments section below.
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