2025 Holiday Shopping Scams To Avoid

Takeaways: Avoiding Holiday Shopping Scams

• The holiday shopping season is a busy season for everyone — including scammers.
• Protect yourself by slowing down, double-checking links and prices, and avoiding deals that seem too good to be true.
• New advances in technology around AI may bring new scams in 2025.

It's that time of year when ads and promotions from your favorite brands are filling your inbox, playing on your excitement and tempting you to score big on deals. (BOGO! Expires tomorrow!) But deals aren't always what they seem.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logs complaints early in the year, every year, when shoppers start feeling the effects of the previous holiday season's scams.

These scams can include paying for items you never receive, auction site misrepresentation and gift card fraud. Last year, online shopping issues were the second most common category of fraud, according to the FTC.

Around one-third of shoppers who've been hit by a holiday shopping scam lost an average of $840.

Don't fall victim to holiday shopping scams. Learn about common scams to protect yourself and help prevent holiday shopping fraud. Here's what to watch out for while doing your holiday shopping online:

7 Holiday Shopping Scams To Avoid

Three-quarters of consumers expect gifts to cost more this year, according to a 2025 Deloitte survey. Yet, due to economic uncertainty, they also expect to seek discounts, and cut extras this year to spend 10% less overall compared with 2024.

That means hunting for deals is top priority for many shoppers this season. With consumers focused on stretching their paychecks, scammers see a big opportunity, too.

These are just seven of the current holiday scams you might encounter when you see that great deal. Learn more by using the Financial Technology Association's site Smarter than Scams, which launched in 2025.

1. AI Scams

AI is in everything these days — including scams. According to the McAfee Holiday Shopping 2025 Fact Sheet, almost 60% of consumers say they're more concerned about AI-generated scams in 2025, compared with 2024.

According to the Better Business Bureau, scammers use AI to do the following:

• Create fake celebrity endorsements
• Create fake "family-owned" shop owner backstories and photos
• Create fake but authentic-looking websites
• Advertise fake products

As an example, the BBB noted a scammer posed as celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to endorse supposedly free cookware, but the link scammed trusting shoppers out of payment details.

2. Package Delivery Scams

Scammers are betting on an increase in online holiday shopping to take advantage of people with fake shipping notifications.

These scams often work by alerting you with an email or text about a problem with a package. They might include a tracking link that takes you to a login page that looks like a major shipper's website. You'll be asked to provide your username and password or credit card information.

Don't fall for it. UPS and FedEx both say they will never ask you for personal information or payment information through unsolicited texts and emails.

Before you click, look closely at the link in the message to see if it's really the shipper's website. 

If it's in an email, hover over the URL and make sure the link is really from the site it says it's from. UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service provide tips on their websites for how to avoid these types of scams. UPS also shows examples of fraudulent emails and text messages (PDF).

Package Theft

But wait. Let's say your package does get delivered. Even if it's on your porch, that doesn't guarantee you'll receive it. Package theft from "porch pirates" may mean you don't receive your item.

Consider these steps to protect your online purchases:

• Track packages routinely
• Ship to a store
• Set up a security camera
• Install an at-home anti-theft parcel box
• Team up with your neighbors in case you aren't home to retrieve your package
• Use parcel pick-up lockers when available
• Require a signature

3. Lookalike Websites

According to the McAfee Holiday Shopping 2025 Fact Sheet, 96% of Americans plan to shop online this year. Around 55% of online shoppers say they'll do so because it's faster and easier than heading for brick-and-mortar stores. Around 46% say they're hunting down better deals and discounts.

So as you browse online, be wary of emails and texts with links enclosed. A simple misspelling or wrong search could land you on a lookalike website. Scammers often use imposter sites to get your personal information.

Consider bookmarking the real sites you use often so you don't have to type in the URL. Also, as a rule, never go to the retailer's website by clicking a link for a deal in an email, text or social media ad. Instead, go directly to the site you trust.

Sure, the deals are going fast, but taking the time to make sure you're on the right website before you give away sensitive information will ultimately save you time, money and lots of headaches.

4. Free Gifts

If you're on the hunt for online holiday deals, what better time for scammers to tempt you with fake offers for free gifts and prizes? These scams are likely to arrive through your social media feed, by text and by email.

The scams aren't new, but they tend to appear more often during the push for holiday deals.

According to the BBB, scammers might promote a giveaway on social media. To enter, all you have to do is like or comment on the post. The more likes and comments a post gets, the more legitimate it looks to other users and the platform's algorithm. Once the fake giveaway has gotten enough attention, the scammers will change the content to include a malicious link or promote "spammy products."

5. Gift Card Scams

Gift card scams work two ways: When scammers sell you a fake gift card and when scammers require you to use a gift card to buy a fake item.

To avoid these scams, only buy gift cards from stores you know and trust. The FTC recommends against using online auction sites to buy gift cards because you might end up with a fake or stolen card.

Scammers will try to convince you to pay with gift cards because they're like cash and they are difficult to trace: Once the money is gone, it's usually gone. Scammers will play on the urgency of a deal expiring soon.

But paying with a credit card won't take any extra time, and if something goes wrong, you can usually work with your credit card company to reverse the charges.

To protect yourself, only spend gift cards at the retailer the card is for. Never give the gift card number or pin to the seller.

6. Phishing and Smishing

Phishing and smishing scams are a year-round risk, but scammers use the urgency of holiday shopping deals to put a holiday spin on their efforts. 

For the third quarter of 2025, e-commerce and shipping sites were several of the most imitated brands used in phishing attacks, according to Check Point Software Technologies. These include Apple, Amazon, PayPal and DHL.

With phishing, criminals try to imitate the official website by using a similar domain name or URL and a web design that resembles the real site. Scammers use both email and text messages to send out the fake website link.

The goal remains the same in these scenarios: Steal users' credentials, payment details or other personal information.

Remember, for email, it's important to look carefully at the sender's address before you open any messages. If you don't recognize it, the best thing to do is not open it and send the message to junk or spam mail. If you do open a phishing email accidentally, don't click on any links. For text messages, it's also best to avoid clicking links.

Fake Order Scams

Another type of phishing message you might encounter is a fake notification of a problem with an online order. If you didn't order anything from the seller, that's a red flag. If you're not sure, go directly to the seller's website and log in to view your orders from there.

Still unsure? Contact the seller directly by phone, email or chat that you find on the seller's website, not from the email or text message you received.

Amazon, another popular company for scammers to impersonate, provides information about how to differentiate legitimate messages from fraudulent ones.

7. Fraudulent Charities

From fake GoFundMe links to the latest disaster relief, criminals may impersonate charitable organizations to trick victims into giving up money or information.

Tips to protect yourself:

• If you decide to give to a nonprofit, donate to the organization directly and not to an individual who may or may not be a real representative of the organization.
• Never make an impulse donation in response to an ad or plea you see on social media.
• Take time to research the organization. There are resources such as the BBB's Wise Giving Alliance and Charity Navigator that can help people make more informative decisions about where their money is going.

6 Tips To Protect Yourself From Holiday Shopping Scams

Scammers use many of the same tactics during the winter holidays as they do during other times of the year. Here are a few basic steps you can take to protect yourself this holiday season:

1. Don't give out your information. Never give your login information, including user IDs, passwords or authentication codes in response to emails, text messages or passwords. 
2. Inspect links. Look carefully at senders' email addresses and web addresses in links. Make sure they are spelled correctly. Sometimes scammers will change an address by one letter. Even better, don't click links in the message. Go directly to the retailer's website and check your order information there. 
3. Pause for a moment. No deal is worth giving away sensitive personal information or account information to a scammer. 
4. Avoid suspicious deals. Assume that if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. 
5. Set up banking alerts. Alerts are text or email notifications of account activity that help you stay on top of your finances. Learn more about banking alerts.
6. Use a credit card. Around 35% of online shoppers will use a credit card for additional fraud protection, according to the 2025 McAfee survey. Just ensure you have a plan to pay off the balance so you're not faced with interest and fees after the holiday season wraps up.

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