Scammers target Black Friday shoppers with AI text messages, phishing emails

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year — and prime season for scams. Now in 2025 scammers are more emboldened than ever, thanks to AI.

According to research from cybersecurity company Guardio, there has been a 30x increase in shopping-related scams and fraudulent text messages over the past month. November is already the top month for online scams in 2025, even before Thanksgiving weekend.

Guardio has also seen a rise in the number of unique email addresses promoting Black Friday-related campaigns in the past week — by more than 500 percent.

What’s driving the rise? The company points to research from earlier this year from the organization Anti-Phishing Working Group that found that 76 percent of phishing websites now use AI-generated content. 

AI isn’t just helping scammers create content for their schemes, its also aiding scammers in carrying out more convincing fraud.

The usual telltale signs of a scam — spelling or grammatical errors, a lack of familiarity with the company and its products it’s trying to imitate — are on their way out. With AI, scammers can perfectly replicate entire websites for their phishing campaigns.

AI-generated voices and videos can also provide scammers with convincing impersonations of company employees. In short, AI helps scammers appear authentic. 

Bad actors targeting Black Friday shoppers have focused on a few popular brand names over the past few months, Guardio’s research found. Those brands include AT&T, Amazon, Apple (virtual and brick-and-mortar stores), Loews, Verizon, Costco, Walmart, and Kroger. 

Why target Black Friday and Cyber Monday? It’s not just because there are more consumers spending online over that period. The usual holiday distractions, combined with the urgency of getting limited time deals, results in consumers becoming more vulnerable to scams.

The most common scam tactic, Guardio says, is the “urgent account alert.” These are text messages that inform targets that their Amazon account has been suspended, say, or their Verizon bill payment was declined. Recipients may be more inclined to fall for these scams as they seek to fix the issue in time for the holidays.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. consumers lost more than $432 million in online shopping scams in 2024 — and 2025 will likely see those losses rise.

One of the easiest ways to avoid being scammed is not to click any links received via email or text message. Go directly to these companies’ websites from your web browser, or via their official mobile apps, instead.