As the holiday shopping rush begins with Black Friday, online fraudsters are increasing their efforts to target shoppers. A Forbes report has revealed that fraudulent websites have increased by 89% compared to last year, with almost 80% of shopping-related emails flagged as fraud. Even trustworthy Google search results are manipulated to redirect users to malicious websites.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a warning to online shoppers, highlighting measures to protect against these scams during Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and the rest of the holiday season. The warning is particularly important for users of popular web browsers such as Chrome, Safari and Edge, which dominate 95% of the US market. Shoppers are urged to remain vigilant and follow security tips to avoid falling victim to these threats.

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The investigative agency has warned: “When shopping online during the Christmas period – or any other time of the year – always be wary of offers that seem too good to be true. Don’t become the next victim of a scammer. Thousands of people do so every year.” Victims of holiday scams can rob you of hard-earned money, personal information, and at least some holiday cheer.

According to the precautionary measures mentioned in the statement published on the FBI’s official website, the cyber scams include:

• Non-delivery fraud, where you pay for goods or services you find online but never receive your items
• Non-payment fraud where you send purchased goods or services but never receive payment for them
• Auction fraud where a product you purchased was misrepresented on an auction site
• Gift card scam in which a seller asks you to pay with a prepaid card

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2023 report, non-payment and non-delivery scams cost people more than $309 million that year. Credit card fraud caused an additional $173 million in losses. The IC3 receives a large number of complaints in the first few months of each year, suggesting a connection to the shopping scams during the previous holiday season.