Cybercriminals Exploit Popular Brands Like Apple, Prada, and Sephora to Scam Holiday Shoppers, According to New BrandShield Report

BrandShield, a leader in AI-powered digital risk protection, today announced a new report detailing digital threats impacting consumer brands spanning the technology, fashion, beauty, and luxury spaces this holiday shopping season. The report comes as consumers in the United States are projected to spend a record-setting $989 billion in November and December 2024.

“We’re seeing fraudsters across the globe continue to exploit the holiday season by targeting consumers, who are spending increasingly more on holiday gifts year after year,” said Yoav Keren, CEO and Co-founder of BrandShield. “With the rise of AI-enabled threats, bad actors have even more sophisticated means of tricking shoppers into buying fakes and counterfeits, and in many cases, they’ll take their money and send nothing at all. Consumers must exercise caution to ensure they buy from legitimate sources.”

iPhone Records Most Domain Registrations of All Products in 2024

Using its proprietary AI-powered platform, BrandShield’s deep crawl of the Internet and analysis of websites, domain names, and social platforms revealed hundreds of suspicious domain registrations targeting top consumer technology products, including Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, and Sony’s PlayStation.

Of the brands and products examined in the report, Apple’s iPhone witnessed the highest number of domain registrations, with 4,971 registrations occurring between January and October 2024. There were 606 suspicious domain registrations relating to the iPhone in October 2024 alone, beating out the product’s monthly average (497.1) and outpacing those of Xbox Series X and PlayStation combined by more than 3x.

Total number of suspicious domain registrations per brand in October 2024:

• iPhone – 606

• Xbox Series X – 133

• PlayStation – 41

Fraudsters Take Aim at High-End Apparel

The report also examined suspicious new domain registrations relating to sought-after luxury brands, including Chanel, Hermes, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, and Prada.

Leading into the holiday shopping season, Prada recorded the greatest number (239) of suspicious domain registrations in October, increasing 25% from the prior month. A full breakdown of suspicious domain registrations per brand in October 2024 is below:

• Prada – 239

• Hermes – 215

• Gucci – 125

• Chanel – 120

• Ralph Lauren – 16

Domain Registrations for Beauty and Fitness Brands Rival Luxury Counterparts

In its analysis of beauty and fitness brands, the report noted that it’s not only the most expensive luxury items that are the target of scammers. BrandShield found that Hoka recorded the most suspicious domain registrations in October 2024, surpassing Clinique and OnCloud by more than 2x and Sephora and Adidas by more than 3x.

Total number of suspicious domain registrations per brand in October 2024:

• Hoka – 314

• Clinique – 156

• OnCloud – 124

• Sephora – 85

• Adidas – 84

Best Practices to Avoid Falling Victim While Holiday Shopping

To help consumers stay safe while shopping online this holiday season, BrandShield recommends keeping an eye out for these red flags:

1. URL Typos: If the website URL contains typos, such as “targett.com” or “eBaay.com”

2. Spelling or Grammatical Errors: If the website has spelling or grammatical errors throughout. Legitimate retailers and merchants will invest in ensuring that the website is free of errors such as these.

3. Messages from Third Parties: If you receive a text or a private message through social media, email, text or instant messaging, offering a deal for a product that seems too good to be true, avoid clicking the links. Try finding the special offer directly at the website of the company you would like to buy from.

4. Negative Reviews: If a website or company has many negative reviews, it may be a scam. Also, look for fake positive reviews trying to balance out real warnings from scam victims, and err on the side of caution when purchasing from unknown sellers.

5. No URL Padlock: If a website does not have a padlock image to the left of its URL. That being said, many phishing websites now have padlocks next to the left of their URLs, so this doesn’t necessarily indicate that a website is safe.

Learn more about holiday e-commerce threats and how to protect your brand and consumers at https://blog.brandshield.com/dont-let-counterfeits-ruin-the-holidays-online-brand-protection.

For more information on BrandShield, please visit https://www.brandshield.com.

About BrandShield

BrandShield is a leading cybersecurity company focusing on AI-Powered Digital Risk Protection. The company’s system protects the world’s largest brands and consumers from phishing attacks, online fraud, counterfeiting, and other online threats posed by dangerous cybercriminals. Through its AI/ML platform, BrandShield identifies, tracks, and takes down online threats for global brands and organizations, including Levi’s, New Balance, ARC’TERYX, Tiffany &Co., Dropbox, Bristol Myers Squibb, and the Pharmaceutical Security Institute. To learn more about BrandShield, please visit the company website at https://www.brandshield.com/.

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VSC for BrandShield

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