Buying on internet. - It seems that there are more and more fake websites appearing and looking very similar as the 'original' ones come around.

Usually one gets there through a phishing link in an email, one reason i try to avoid going places via email links. In Holland there just was an item on the news showing almost identical but fake login pages from banks, and some larger internet stores. Mentioned was as cause of this recent increase, that there were new software tools (on the 'darkweb'?) around facilitating the building of fake websites.

I almost never buy anything without Paypal or VISA etc as usual you are safer there. I had a similar event with a nasty ebay seller; did not look too close at the checkout details when i went for 'buy it now', and all of a sudden i was charged $300 'shipping' costs for an online software package. Seller refused returns, in an insulting manner even saying a deal is a deal, and i had to get eBay involved. They took my side, reverted the transaction. Ebay told me they removed the seller etc. and it seems Paypal blocked his money withdrawal. 2 days later it seemed the seller was active again, reported him again, don't know how that ended yet. Bestservice has a good reputation though.

Serials and copy protection is a drag almost always for a legal buyer. Seems you're better off using hacked stuff LoL. I just bought an expensive Waves package, after fooling with a few plugins at some one else's place. Boy, to get the license activation to work i spent about 4 hours and needed to get firewalls and antivirus stuff turned off to get it done. Even some registry permission got in the way. I finally found the solution via similar complaints on the Gearslutz forum. F

PS i'll post this as new item elsewhere on the PG site.