When searching for fake websites I decided to look towards the gaming community. Most games are advertised to children and they have in-game purchasable items. Roblox is a great example of this. The platform is mostly made of children and has a virtual currency called Robux used to buy in-game items like outfits and emotes. Kids are desperate for Robux and can even sometimes give up their account information for them. BLX.GG is a website that preys on children to steal information associated with the Roblox account. It lures children with the official Roblox logo and by using other familiar website logos like Discord.com. It asks you to join the discord server and it has a large green button that says start earning. After pressing the start earning button it asks for your Roblox Username with a message that says “We will never ask for your password” to seem more trustworthy. The official Roblox website has all of the games on it with your account information. When going through the settings it asks for you to enter passwords and has 2FA that can be activated. Robux can only be bought or sent to you from other players and it will not ask for any information when other players send you Robux.
Next is Softonic. I found this website by searching up “Free GTA V” which is a popular game that costs about $30 currently. This is a website that advertises any game you can think of for free to download. This is too good to be true since most of these games are $50+. The website looks almost like the Google Play store. It advertises games with fake reviews to seem legit and familiar to the Google Play store. This website also has many green download buttons which is a bad sign for an obvious scam. GTA can be bought on the official Rockstar website which looks nothing like Softonic. Rockstar is black yellow with all of its games advertised and non suspicious looking ads. It asks you to sign in before you ever enter any valuable information like a credit card number and even has 2FA.
This last one isn’t a specific website but is an aspect of all websites. Advertisements are everywhere and appear in all forms. They aren’t just commercials or annoying clips interrupting your YouTube video, they are enticing hunks of bait. They pop up on the screen begging you to click them and all of a sudden your computer screen is frozen making loud obnoxious noises. One specific website I can think of while on the topic of games is CurseForge. This is a website where you can download modifications to the popular game Minecraft. When downloading these mods you must click one particular download button in order to receive it. After clicking this download button you are sent to another webpage where it says “Start downloading”. When taking a closer look you can see in the top right corner there is a timer counting down which then becomes a skip button after five seconds. The website shows a mandatory bait ad before officially downloading your mod. Minecraft doesn’t have an official mod website so it’s a risk to try and download them. Advertisements are inescapable, however, on big websites like YouTube they will never allow you to be sent to sketchy sites with the video for ads. They can be easily skipped and all of their ads are clearly marked with yellow and have large “Advertisement” signs over the top of them.