Key Takeaways
- Black Friday scam websites surged 89% in one year, and phishing emails impersonating major retailers rose by more than 2,000% during peak holiday shopping.
- HTTPS protects data in transit; it does not tell you whether the retailer is trustworthy.
- Fake storefronts can now be built in hours, complete with AI-generated copy and product listings copied from real retailers.
- Paying by credit card gives you dispute rights that wire transfers, crypto, and debit cards do not.
- Federal law gives you 60 days from the statement date to dispute a charge; Visa typically allows 120 days from the transaction date.
- Not every disappointing Black Friday price is a scam. Some are just marketing.
Introduction
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have grown into the biggest online shopping days of the year, and where the shoppers go to spend their money, the scammers follow. Last year, Black Friday scam websites surged by 89% compared to the year before, and phishing emails impersonating major U.S. retail brands increased by more than 2,000% during the peak of holiday shopping, according to a report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.
The reason this weekend works so well for criminals has less to do with technology and more to do with our expectations. They use technology to contact and facilitate the scams they run, but the scams also depend on fooling us. Scammers can profit when we are rushed, hunting for deals, and we have been told to expect prices that would look absurd any other time of year. Scammers know this, and they plan to exploit it every year.
Below are the most common scams to watch for on any given day, but particularly on Black Friday weekend. We include a few notes on things that are not scams, exactly, but will help you protect your information and your finances better.
Package delivery scams
One of the most commons cams in America is known as the package delivery scam.
The scammers know that many of us are waiting on a package delivery at any particular moment. They capitalize on this fact by sending communications (usually in the form of texts) that claim there is some problem with your delivery. When you click on the link it provides to resolve this issue (pelase, do not click such links!) you will be taken to a page that will try to steal your information, your money, or both. Some promise resolution once you identify yourself by your social security number, while others claim they need a small fee of several dollars to attempt redelivery (do not pay for anything through a link sent in an unsolicited text message).
The ‘small fee’ is primarily to steal your credit card information, which will then be used fraudluently or sold off to some other scammer for later use.
Pricing That Is Too Good to Be True
We are inundated with a flood of unbelievable offers on an almost daily basis. Many of these fraudulent offers are served to users through social media advertising, but these can come through any way in which you can be contacted. Criminals are likely to try whatever they think will work, and so we should be on our guard no matter how we are contacted or communicated with. Scammers are happy to use text, phone calls, emails, ads, social media, and anything else that shows any potential for defrauding people of their money.
This type of scam can also come in the form of ads for false deals for consumer goods, investment scams promising too-good-to-be-true returns, and everything in between. Stay alert and train yourself to see too-good-to-be-true offers as a cause for suspicion rather than excitement.
Sites That Pop Up From Nowhere
These days, and even more so in this age of AI fakes, we must be on the lookout for businesses that seem to appear fully formed out of the digital swamp.
Scammers now have the capability to create an apparently real website for an apparently real business in a matter of hours. AI helps to ensure there ar eno grammatical mistakes to catch, and the listings may be entirely real, but copied form another website. Such fraudulent sites don’t have or sell any actual products. Instead, they sell you the idea that they are trustworthy, and once they have your credit card information, they tend to do nasty and illegal things with it. Whether they send you a knock-off version of what they promised, nothing at all, or something else, the scammers behind these illegitimate websites are planning to misuse and abuse consumer finances.
Read more here on how to detect these websites as the frauds they are.
Lookalike Websites
This is similar to the above issue, except that some scammers imitate legitimate retailers. Again, this is even easier for them to do with AI than it was before. They pair these lookalike sites with lookalike URLs to pass a casual glance, hoping to coast though the login page (to steal your login credentials) or the checkout page (to steal your payment information) before you notice any discrepancies. Be on the lookout for websites that don’t feel right, but even more important, always check the URL of the website you are on before you login or checkout.
Phishing Emails
This is one of the earliest of online scams, and, unfortunately, it seems it’s here to stay.
The general idea of the scam has stayed the same over the years: users receive an email that attempts to obtain a user’s money, or login, personally identifying, or financial information. They typically try to trigger a sense of urgency in the reader, such as a great sale that expires tonight, an email claiming their account has been compromised and they must login right away, and so on.
Fake Discounts and Price Manipulation
This is not a scam, per se, but it is not the most honest of business practices, either. And it most definitely is not designed to save you money.
What happens in this type of situation is that a price may be lower on Black Friday than it was the two months before it, but in reality, the lowest price of the year may have been in July or August when retailers are trying to drive flagging sales through the summer slump.
There has been so much coordinated marketing around Black Friday every year that consumers expect a true deal on Black Friday. But we do not always get what we expect, and Black Friday is no different. Retailers who prioritize making money over serving their customers are likely to try promoting a sale as a great deal when in reality, it would have been best to buy during the summer.
A Note About HTTPS
There has been a great deal of talk about the importance of https rather than http in the URL of the website you wish to purchase from. While important, it applies to the security of your data in between the retailer and yourself; if the website uses http, a third party may be able to observe and steal your payment information, for example.
But the security of a method for communicating between yourself and the retailer is only as trustworthy as the retailer itself. The information can be encoded during transit, but it is not encoded at the other end where the scammer waits to steal your information and max out your credit card.
Please Pay by Credit Card
Credit cards offer protections that other payment methods don’t have. This is not an accident; it is, in fact, encoded into law. Unlike paying by wire transfer or crypto, paying by credit or debit card comes with protections. And unlike a debit card, authorizing a payment on a credit card does not make you liable for the entire amount when the transaction is a scam. In fact, when you pay with a credit card, by law you have 60 days from the day the statement containing the error was sent to you to dispute a charge. Visa goes further and typically offers 120 days from the day the charge was made for a dispute to be filed.
But either way, when using a credit card, you are not liable for fraudulent charges made online, assuming the credit card issuer decides in your favor on the dispute. Keep an eye on your statements to detect any unauthorized charges and file a dispute as soon as you notice any.
Shopping Safely This Year
None of this means you should skip the sales entirely. It does mean that you should be careful not to fall for the many fake deals that fill the internet during the holiday shopping season in particular.
It’s true that there are some real deals to be had, and the trustworthy retailers you already know are safe to use. The trick is simply slowing down enough to look, because nearly every scam above depends on you moving fast and looking later.
A few habits cover most of it. Check the URL before you log in or check out. Navigate to a retailer directly rather than tapping an ad or a link in an email. Treat an unbelievable price as a reason to look closer rather than a reason to hurry. Pay with a credit card. And once the packages arrive and the weekend is over, actually read your statement line by line, because that is where anything you missed will eventually show up.
Shop This Season With a Card That Protects You
If you are going to pay by credit card, and we hope you will, it is worth using one that is built around member protection rather than fee income. The Latitude 32 Visa carries a fixed 12.90% APR (as of August 2026) that has not moved in over a decade, with no annual fee, no balance transfer fee, and no penalty rate, plus Visa Zero Liability protection and full dispute rights on every purchase you make.
Learn more or apply for the Latitude 32 Visa, or stop by any of our Charleston-area branches.