Black Friday sale season is almost here. Several online and offline retailers have already started offering deals and discounts on a wide range of products as a part of the early Black Friday sale. On this, Kaspersky has released a new report highlighting the latest shopping-related cyber threats, exposing over 13 million e-shop-related phishing attacks in 2023.
How scammers target users for online shopping scams
The report mentions that the scammers mimic to be from popular marketplaces, luxury brands and gadget stores. In the first 10 months of the year, Kaspersky identified 30,803,840 phishing attacks targeting online shopping, payment systems, and banking institutions, with e-commerce platforms used as a lure in 43.5% of total attacks (13,390,142 attacks).
The report mentions that scams and phishing are favoured tactics for fraudsters seeking profit.
“Black Friday” keyword has noted a threefold increase since October. These domains encompass a spectrum, from non-existent establishments to highly convincing replicas of authentic online stores.
Kaspersky has mentioned that it has detected several counterfeit stores selling clothes, appliances and gadgets.
The entire process of such scams includes establishing fraudulent online stores and deceiving individuals into making payments for products that are never delivered.
Another aspect of such scams is linking the card to pay for goods which leads to the scam where users think that they are paying for goods, but the money is withdrawn by scammers gradually only to empty the victims’ account.
Kaspersky’s experts unveiled that fraudsters engaged in phishing attacks, totalling 240,000, specifically aimed at potential victims, exploiting the reputations of major industry leaders such as eBay, Walmart, Alibaba, and regional platforms like MercadoLibre.
Tech enthusiasts faced a surge in phishing attacks during the Black Friday period, with scammers mimicking Apple products and services. From January to October 2023, Kaspersky products identified and thwarted 2.8 million phishing attempts associated with these deceptive tactics. Additionally, gamers fell prey to console scams, lured by promises of enticing purchases that ultimately left them with empty pockets.