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GAME warns users to take precautions over fake website scam

Last Updated on December 1, 2023
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UK retailer GAME has warned its customers via social media that there’s a fake GAME website currently harvesting data from unknowing customers.

The scam is clearly being done during the havoc that’s caused by the pandemic’s complete wipeout of the production of electronics, affecting the launches of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, as well as Nintendo’s recent launch of the OLED version of the Switch.

As the ramp-up to Christmas comes into full view, as well as the horrors of Black Friday, customers are obsessively seeking out the new consoles and will seemingly bend over backward to do so, hence the completely devious idea to set up a scam website for GAME that can prey on unsuspecting customers over the coming weeks.

Other than a vague Tweet, the retailer has made little known about the scam currently going on and what to look out for in particular. Email scams are still wildly prevalent, with some major email providers still unable to filter out phishing scams.

If you’re concerned about the legitimacy of an email, please just look at what’s being sent to you. If you’re on Gmail, you can actually get a lot more information about where the email has come from than on say, Outlook, but oftentimes you can just tell by looking at the email itself.

On Gmail, next to the address, press the small arrow button to bring up almost all information that Google can scrape from the information it’s been given.

If the email looks wildly out of place, send it to the spam box or delete it outright. There’s no need to interact with it any further. Essentially, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s a bad deal.

Joel is a a lover of janky games, Magic the Gathering, and going down rabbit holes. For PC Guide he has written about peripherals, the Steam Deck, retro games, news and more.