Holiday scams: How fraudsters exploit the shopping season and how to stay safe
Black Friday and the holiday shopping season are the busiest times of the year for online shopping, and unfortunately, for online scams too. In October alone, we observed a significant spike in blocked fake shop (e-shop scams) attacks in the United States. Blocked attacks were up 185% compared with the January to September average, and the number of users targeted rose by 126% over the same period.
Throughout most of 2025, the share of users running into fake shop scams stayed relatively low. From late spring, it started to creep up, then shot up sharply in October as holiday campaigns kicked in. The chart below shows this “risk ratio”, that is, the percentage of active users who have been protected from fake shops on any given day.
That is not a coincidence. When people are hunting for bargains, feeling rushed, and bombarded with ads, they are more likely to click before they think. Scammers know this and flood the internet with convincing fake shops that look like the real thing.
This blog walks through what we are seeing and what you can do to stay safe while you shop.
What we are seeing this shopping season
When we looked at the domains behind these fake shops, a clear pattern appeared:
Many scam sites run on legitimate platforms such as Shopify, MyShopline, Shoplazza, and Chinese frameworks such as Shopage.org. These services are designed to help small businesses get online quickly, but they also give fraudsters an easy way to launch professional-looking stores at speed.
Most of the fake shops we saw are wrapped in seasonal themes. Right now, many are covered in festive banners and countdown timers. Some have already switched to Christmas layouts and “holiday sale” branding to catch early gift shoppers.
The way victims arrive at these sites is also telling. Rather than relying on spam email, scammers are buying placement in Facebook Ads and TikTok Ads. These ads can be highly targeted, so a fake offer for designer glasses, sneakers or kitchen gadgets can be shown directly to the people most likely to be interested. Fake shops are not a problem just in the United States. In fact, during October and November alone, we blocked almost 260 000 fake e-shop domains worldwide, which is around four times higher than the same shopping season last year. The map below shows the share of users we protected from fake shop scams in each country in 2025. Darker colors mean a higher proportion of people in that country ran into at least one blocked fake shop, with clear hotspots in North America, much of Europe and Australia, but activity almost everywhere.
Copy-paste shops and the role of AI tools
We also saw multiple "single product" fake shops that look almost identical. One example promoted "intelligent reading glasses" with bold claims about advanced optics and a big 50 percent discount. Another pushed a "designer wine glass" using the same layout, the same type of trust badges, and nearly the same urgency-driven messages.
You can think of these as copy-paste shops. Once a scammer has a template that works, they can quickly clone it and swap in a new product, image and price.
While we did not confirm AI built stores in this particular dataset, the tools to automate this already exist. AI store builders for Shopify and AI powered marketing tools promise to create product pages, write copy, and generate ad campaigns in a few clicks. In the wrong hands, that makes it easier for fraudsters to launch more fake shops faster and to test which lures work best.
How fake shops fake trust
Modern fake shops are not just about flashy discounts. They are designed to look legitimate at a glance.
Many use polished templates and SSL certificates, so the little padlock icon appears in the browser. That padlock only means the connection is encrypted, not that the site is honest, but scammers know people trust it.
Some fake shops seed third party review platforms with positive reviews to boost their scores. In our analysis we saw cases where those reviews were later removed by the platform for breaking guidelines, a strong sign they were fake. In at least one case, the scam site ran on a subdomain of an older, existing site and showed Black Friday deals alongside those disputed reviews. Piggybacking on an established domain is another way to look more credible.
On social media, scammers run ads that look like any other promotion in your feed. They often target specific demographics, interests or locations, and in some cases even reply to comments or reviews to keep up the illusion of a real business.
How to Spot a Fake Online Shop
There is no single trick that catches every scam, but a few simple habits can dramatically lower the risk:
- Check the address bar, not just the logo. Look closely at the URL. Watch out for strange spellings, extra words, or domains that do not match the brand name you expect.
- Be skeptical of “too good to be true” discounts. Genuine retailers do run big Black Friday sales, but if a high demand product is half the usual price, treat it as suspicious.
- Verify reviews. Do not rely only on the testimonials shown on the shop itself. Search the store name together with words like "reviews", "scam" or "complaints". Be wary if you only find a handful of overly positive comments.
- Check contact and return information. Legitimate shops make it easy to see who they are and how to reach them, for example a physical address, company name, clear return policy, and real customer service options. Vague contact details or only a web form are warning signs.
- Use security tools and safer payment methods. Enable browser protection and make sure your security solutions are on so known scam domains are blocked before you land on them. When you pay, prefer options that offer buyer protection, such as credit card or trusted payment service, and avoid bank transfers, gift cards or cryptocurrency for online purchases.
Scammers treat Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the entire holiday shopping season as a business opportunity. They use the same tools, platforms and marketing channels as legitimate stores, just with a very different goal.
The good news is that you do not need to stop shopping online to stay safe. A bit of skepticism, a habit of checking before you click, and the right security tools in the background will go a long way to keep your money and data out of their hands.
