You can get some legal deals on some of these sites though.
I forgot to mention that the software I bought was one generation behind the one that was current at that time. So I think it was a good deal.
You would have to do a lot of sweet talking to get me to believe that you can legally get photoshop at $50.
You can also check to see if a site is legit by contacting verisign... or whoever is processing the credit cards. Also the credit card companies sometimes keep lists of bad sites.