First saw an advertisement on Instagram app. It was MSI branded ad claiming 500 pieces of GTX1080TI at price match. So I clicked on the link hoping that it will be MSI factory store selling the GPU at MSRP.
To my surprise the prices listed were $120 for MSI GAMING GeFroce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB GDRR5X DirectX 12 352-bit VR.
I was in a shock and almost placed the order and just before registering on the website, I realised that the Favicon for the websites was a spider. That made me check the reliability of the website.
After doing some tinkering I was not able to find the link of the website on MSI's official website. After reading all of the content on the fake website, I realised there have not mentioned any contact details, company name, address, contact number etc. Then clicking on the social media buttons on their website took me to the home page of the respective social media.
I thanked my stars that I am web developer and have sound knowledge about how websites work and I did not get fooled by the astronomically low prices and way it hit me.
For almost a minute I was blinded towards the authenticity of the website until I really gave it a thought.
After looking at the Who.is details of the domain name, I realised it is registered to someone in Asia and is probably someone trying to sell their used mining cards for cheap.
This is to inform the general public that they should look into the authenticity of a website before making a purchase online.
Stay safe!
PS: Link to the website : http://msi-stores.com/