Sony’s next-gen gaming console, the Playstation 5, is a red hot item these days and is often found out of stock in online as well as offline stores. With so much hype taking place around the often out-of-stock console, scammers have now found a new way to trick people to revealing their personal info and taking their money.
Taking full advantage of PS5’s scarcity, there are now many scam websites on the internet that claim to sell the latest next-gen consoles but do nothing like what they say. One such site that many have bumped into is the “sony-direct-playstation.com”. So, is this website legit and can you buy one for yourself there? That’s what we’re talking about in this post below.
Is sony-direct-playstation.com legit?
If you’re in the market for getting your hands on a Playstation 5 console and you bumped into this website – Sony-direct-playstation.com, let us warn you that this is NOT a legitimate website.
Upon checking the site at who.is, you will be able to see that the site’s domain was registered as recently as 29th January 2021. Although the site appears to be an “almost” duplicate version of the original Playstation Direct store, there are a few things that you may notice when going to the site.
For instance, while the store layout looks identical to Playstation Direct, the links to certain elements inside the site are from different domains. The scam site has cleverly linked some of the potential more-accessible content to pages from its own domain while keeping links to other PlayStation info tagged to the Playstation Direct’s original site.
This is evident from the fact that clicking the ‘About Us’ link at the top of the site takes you to “sony-direct-playstation.com/shop/about-us/” while scrolling down and clicking on the ‘Contact Us’ link takes you to “playstation.com/en-in/corporate/about-us”; the latter being the original PlayStation page. Moreover, the ‘About Us’ page on the scam site shows signs of poor grammar and unreasonable discounts.
Other content hosted on the website is copied from the original Playstation Direct. Another indication that the “sony-direct-playstation.com” runs as a scam is that the website only allows you to pay for the products listed on it via credit cards, bank transfers, money orders, or bitcoin.
There’s no way you can make a transaction on the website using PayPal which would let you get your refunds when something goes wrong. Besides that, there’s no way to view your shipping schedule, return policy, or cancellation information.
All this points to the fact that you should avoid going to sony-direct-playstation.com, let alone shop or make a transaction on it. For the most part, scam websites like this one will force you to prepay for the item you wish to buy. If not, they would try to lure you into giving away your personal details and contact addresses which would put you at the risk of getting abused or at the danger of a criminal.
What could sony-direct-playstation.com steal from you?
If you go to sony-direct-playstation.com and attempt to buy a PlayStation console, then you run the risk of getting your data stolen. You can lose the following data when going to a scam site:
- Your name, address, contact info, and other
- Your payment and shipping information
- Potential access to your accounts and devices
What is the original Playstation Direct store? Where to buy PS5 from?
You can check the availability of Playstation 5 console and Playstation 5 Digital Edition on the original Playstation Direct store which you can access by checking the link below:
▶ Visit PlayStation Direct here
This website is owned and managed by Sony itself and you will get free delivery for all orders $60.00 and above.
How to spot Scam Playstation stores online
If you encounter a website that claims to sell Playstation 5 console in your region, then here are a few checks you should verify before your make the purchase on it:
- Have you heard of them? If not, then that’s a bad sign.
- Do they have a toll number or any helpline number?
- Call on their helpline number and talk to a human. You can do this multiple times.
- Verify whether the website has both the “About Us” and “Contact Us” pages and check that they aren’t the same.
- Check that the contact email addresses are not from free email providers (for example – gmail.com, hotmail.com, live.com, etc).
- Make sure that their company name and address are available and legit by checking them on Google or Apple Maps.
- Analyze whether the prices shown on the website is reasonable to that of the prices of the product in other stores. Don’t be fooled by really low prices as they might just be enough to get you to pay as quickly as possible.
- Check whether the site is secured with “HTTPS” protocol and not “HTTP”.
- Look for social accounts that the website might have. You can check their profiles to see what others have written about them and also whether the website’s account has had any interaction with others.
- Make sure that the website doesn’t have typos or shows signs of poor grammar.
- If the site resembles in many ways to another site you know or has visited in the past, then you should definitely stay away from it.
- Verify that the site offers payment solutions through PayPal among other options. We mention this because you can use PayPal for safer transactions and easier refunds.
- Try to contact the website owner before you proceed to buy something on the website.
- Check the site’s info at who.is.
The Sony Direct Playstation website is just one of the sites that are trying to exploit the demand for the latest next-gen gaming consoles that is the PS5 which has been in short supply since its launch in November 2020. For buying a console or checking its availability, we’d suggest that you stick with the Playstation Direct store or check Sony Playstation’s social media accounts.
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