One of the things we are always told about scams is that everyone is susceptible to them, it’s just a matter of finding the right match between scam and person.
Earlier this month I received an official-looking notice in the mail. It looked like this:
I think this letter represents an example of a scam or shady business practice that could very easily have taken me in. Here’s why.
Last year I bought a new Toyota and it came with a GPS-enabled anti-theft device. A mobile app for this device and service allows you to see where the car is and where it has been driven. Recently, the app had stopped working. It had crossed my mind that there may have been a trial subscription that had expired, as I had owned the car for a little more than a year. I had made a mental note to ask the dealer next time I was in for a service. So the context to all this is that I had recently been thinking about my car’s GPS tracking device when the letter arrived.
When I opened the letter, I found a warning notice:
Let’s just pause for a moment to look at how some scams work. They take advantage of a thing called the Forer Effect, a psychological phenomenon whereby we tend to take very general statements and personalise them. Horoscopes and psychic readings are good examples of this effect in action. For example, a psychic says to us something like “You are reluctant to open up to people at first meeting, but once they have become a part of your circle of friends you are honest with them often to the point of over-sharing.” Basically they are saying that we are less trusting of people that we don’t know than we are of our friends, which is probably true about everyone. Imagine how much more powerful this effect is when they have some facts at their disposal too, like the make, model and year of my car.
My initial thought was that this might be the explanation as to why my mobile app had stopped working: some kind of introductory subscription was about to expire. The expiration date of 12/8/2025 was about a week away when I received the notice, and the prospect of “waiving the $388 fee to cover the cost of your anti-theft materials” sounds like a good incentive to call and renew coverage. But wait a minute, look at what the letter actually says: “You have not yet contacted us to receive your complimentary anti-theft pre-programmed wireless tracking.” Nothing to do with GPS! The reason is, of course, that PSSC has no idea whether my car has a GPS tracker or not, they are simply preying on everyone’s fear of having their car stolen.
The letter continues with the warning that “Without active tracking on your vehicle, police and law enforcement agencies will not have access to track your vehicle through the public safety crime center network in the unfortunate event that your vehicle is stolen”, another potential incentive to call.
The more I looked at the letter, however, the more things I spotted that seemed a little bit off. For example:
- The name of the company sending me the notice, PSSC, was not the same as the brand name of the GPS tracking in my car, nor was it in any way similar.
- The notice did not make any reference to my car’s VIN (Vehicle Identification Number for non-US readers; all new cars in the United States must have a unique 17-digit alphanumeric identifier, standardised in 1981)
- No web site was listed for PSCC on the notice, which seemed highly unusual in 2025. The only way to contact them was by telephone.
Now thoroughly suspicious, I searched online for PSCC to see if they were legitimate. The top search result led me to this Reddit thread, as well as numerous others.
It turns out that if you call the number, you will be informed that there is a $250 activation fee for this “complementary” service, and the sales reps seem to be very vague about what the service actually entails or how it works, other than it is a “non-GPS” tracking method, supposedly involving turning on the vehicle’s cameras in the event that it is stolen(!). PSCC is not affiliated with Toyota or any other auto manufacturer and is marketing its services to people based on the public records associated with car sales. (So all of the information they had about me and my car is publicly available, which in itself is a bit scary!)
The letter actually tells you this in the small print if you take enough time to find it under one of the folds in the paper:
So is this a scam? I would say so. At best it is predatory marketing for a service of questionable legitimacy. The notice went into the shredder. It just goes to show, however, how convincing some of these things can initially seem. As always with these types of unsolicited offers, view them with a skeptical eye – it could save you a lot of trouble and money!
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