Cybersecurity expert warns of increase in online holiday shopping scams

TAMPA, Fla. — Now that election season is over, cybersecurity experts believe cybercriminals have shifted their focus to holiday shopping.

“Just in the last one month we’ve seen like a 495% increase in overall scams related to Black Friday. Even the Christmas season seems to be starting early for the scammers because starting in October, early November, we’re already seeing like a 340% increase in scams related to Christmas,” said Abhishek Karnik, head of Threat Research and Intelligence for McAfee.

Karnik believes it’s likely more people will fall victim to online shopping scams this holiday season.

“Just the volume of scams makes us believe there’s going to be more activity on social media platforms and therefore a repeat of all the misinformation or the A.I. related scams either deepfakes or fake images, fake reviews will sort of start popping up again on a higher scale than we’ve seen before,” said Karnik.

Cyber experts are seeing different types of shopping scams using fake websites.

Electronics are typically the items most commonly used to scam people.

“So fake shops around selling Apple products. Like we came across this fake website, supposedly an Apple site, but it was also selling Samsung, right? So it’s obvious that’s a scam website,” said Karnik.

Criminals are also taking advantage of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which have their own marketplaces where users can buy things through the app.

Karnik said scammers will create a social media page impersonating a website or make a post about fake versions of a product to steal money or personal information.

“We came across a very interesting one where a certain product had like a billion likes even though it only had 200,000 customer reviews,” he added.

Officials believe artificial intelligence has made the problem even worse, making scams more believable than ever, making it harder for people to distinguish what’s real from what’s fake.

“A good way to catch them is probably look for these subtle clues where you don’t have a lot of history on these sellers, you don’t have a lot of thumbs up, or a lot of these reviews can be fake, so you also have to be cautious of what you trust and don’t trust,” said Karnik.

A recent study from McAfee found nearly 1 in 3 Americans have fallen victim to online holiday shopping scams.

Experts urge you to be extra cautious so you’re not one of them.

“Usually, these scammers are trying to pry on your emotions either emotions of excitement or emotions of fear— like the fear of missing a deal. Or the excitement of getting a deal that’s really good,” said Karnik.

If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

If you make a purchase online, use your credit card if you can and avoid using gift cards or cryptocurrency.