Inside the 2025 Fake Shop Shift: Less Noise, More Deception

Behind the Numbers: What Really Changed in 2025

Black Friday has long been a predictable period of heightened consumer activity and for fraudsters, a reliable opportunity to exploit it. Each year, fake online stores surge in number, mimicking trusted brands to steal customer data and payments. In 2025, Netcraft observed subtle but important changes in this pattern: while overall numbers appeared lower due to a sharp drop in one major fraud group’s activity around September, the underlying threat landscape remains as aggressive and innovative as ever.

The 2025 Trend: A Sudden Ramp, not a Slow Build

Netcraft’s global snapshots reveal a consistent seasonal surge in fraudulent domains as November begins. Between 14 – 21 of October, we saw an average of 54 domains per day mentioning Black Friday. By the end of October, we saw an average of 74 domains/day mentioning Black Friday. And between 3 – 6 of November, the average daily number of domains mentioning Black Friday reached 306, alongside approximately 4,760 domains blocked per day. The takeaway: the ramp toward Black Friday is abrupt and concentrated, giving defenders little time to react.

This year’s apparent dip in overall volume is deceptive. The decline of one large fraud group skewed totals downward, but smaller, regionalized actors quickly filled the vacuum with highly targeted campaigns across multiple languages and geographies.

Three Shifts That Define 2025’s Fake Shop Landscape

1. Rapid Early-November Escalation
Fake shops don’t randomly appear in the fall; they ramp in early November. Security teams must anticipate this compressed timeline and prepare for an intense, short-lived operational sprint. That means scaling takedown operations, monitoring new domain registrations, and activating rapid response protocols ahead of November 1.

2. Smarter Use of Visual Assets and AI Content
Fraudsters are leveraging legitimate marketing assets to make fake storefronts look credible. Many reuse product photos, banners, and hero images taken from official brand websites or stock libraries. Netcraft analysts also observed early signs of AI-generated text, imagery, and entire fraudulent websites deployed to build more convincing pages — a glimpse into how generative tools are reshaping fraud tactics.

3. Globalization and Localization of Scams
The 2025 fake shop wave is truly international. Sites now cater to regional audiences with local currencies, language-specific copy, and localized top-level domains. Examples include:

• lojacrocsbr[.]shop (Brazil)

• sports-adidas[.]com (multi-region)

• frmeublessieges[.]com (France)

• coastwatersportsde[.]com (Germany)

• zwemwinkel[.]com (Netherlands)

• shopuniverse[.]top (Spain)

Localization allows scammers to bypass generic keyword filters and exploit trust within specific markets.

Why These Attacks Still Work

Fake online stores succeed because they exploit universal behavioral cues: urgency, brand familiarity, and trust in search or social ads. Victims are drawn in by limited-time offers, professional-looking websites, and plausible domain names. Cross-border payments and inconsistent fraud reporting make it even harder to disrupt these operations quickly.

What Security Teams Should Do Now

1. Plan for an early-November surge. Bolster detection and takedown capacity before the first week of November and prepare for large- and small-scale attacks.

2. Go beyond domain names. Implement image-similarity analysis and hash-based asset tracking to catch impersonations faster.

3. Expand language coverage. Ensure monitoring spans multiple languages and regions to identify localized threats.

4. Prioritize high-risk domains. Focus on sites that collect payment details or mimic checkout flows.

5. Build brand and payment partner workflows. Establish pre-approved channels with brands and PSPs to accelerate takedowns.

6. Watch for AI artifacts. Flag unusual phrasing or synthetic images indicative of generative tools. This is useful to raise awareness of how AI-generated material may be targeting your brand elsewhere.

7. Share indicators post-takedown. Preserve screenshots, image hashes, and checkout data for intelligence sharing.

Guidance for Brand and Communications Teams

Prepare concise customer messaging before the shopping season begins. Publish official advice explaining how to verify legitimate sites and remind customers that your brand will never request full payment details over email. The goal is simple: educate proactively, not reactively.

The Real Black Friday Risk: An Evolving, Accelerating Threat

This Black Friday, the absence of record-breaking totals doesn’t signal safety. The threat is evolving and increasing in sophistication, not fading. Fake shops are faster to appear, more geographically tailored, and increasingly polished. For defenders, that means focusing on early detection, cross-border coordination, and asset-level intelligence. The fraudsters are moving faster — and the only effective response is to move faster still.