A New Fake Store Every 3 Minutes: Scamwise Holiday Report Shows How AI Has Turned E-Commerce Scammers into Mass Retailers

Savi Security, maker of Scamwise, launches their free Chrome extension to catch fake stores before checkout and opens early access to the Scamwise MCP for personal AI assistants

Scamwise Holiday Shopping Scam Report 2026

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The fake stores are already open for the holidays. Savi Security, the consumer tech company behind the free scam checker Scamwise, today released The 2026 Holiday Shopping Scam Report, a first-of-its-kind look at how online shopping fraud has industrialized in the AI era. Drawing on more than 1 million consumer submissions to Scamwise this year, including more than 250,000 e-commerce sites, the report finds that scammers no longer fake a single product. They fake the entire store, and generative AI is what makes it possible at scale.

Five years ago, shopping scams were crude, single-product cons: fake COVID tests, shady puppy breeders, counterfeit luxury goods with a PayPal button. In 2026, Scamwise data shows polished, professional-looking retailers with department-store-size catalogs, sincere-sounding mission statements, legitimate infrastructure, and real advertising campaigns on major social and search platforms. With Black Friday (Nov. 27) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 30) weeks away, the report concludes that the red flags shoppers were taught to trust no longer work.

Key findings

• A new fake store every 3 minutes. Scamwise users report a new fake store roughly every 3 minutes, about 500 a day.
• Holiday scammers are already open for business. The number of fake holiday-themed online stores reported to Scamwise has grown 5x in the last 60 days and the store that scams a shopper on Black Friday most likely does not exist yet.
• Real ads, fake stores. At least 1 in 5 fake stores traced back to an ad on a major platform, with Meta and Google proving to be the preferred ad channels for scammers.
• Trusted platforms, untrustworthy sellers. Myshopify.com is the most common domain among confirmed scam cases, outranking Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Walmart combined.
• Built to disappear. 7 in 10 fake stores are seen once and never again, nearly 40% are less than 90 days old when first reported, and 85% are gone within two weeks, making them nearly impossible to track down after the fact.
• “Too good to be true” stops working. The impossible discount appears in 1 in 4 scam stores, but during Cyber Week, when legitimate retailers advertise 50% off or more, impossible discounts become perfect camouflage.
• AI shoppers are the new mark. As consumers hand shopping to AI assistants, scam sites are already being surfaced to them, and the old warning signs are failing for humans and machines alike.

“Scammers used to fake a product. Now they fake the whole store, with a full catalog, a return policy, and a paid ad campaign behind it,” said Patrick Coughlin, co-founder and CEO of Savi Security. “Generative AI has turned scammers into big box retailers of bogus products. The instincts shoppers have relied on for years, like ‘it looks sketchy’ or ‘check the reviews,’ don’t catch these sites anymore. That’s why we’re publishing this data now, before the biggest shopping weeks of the year.”

Scamwise Chrome extension: a second opinion before you check out

Alongside the report, Savi Security today launched the free Scamwise Chrome extension, available now in the Chrome Web Store. The extension brings Scamwise’s scam detection directly into the browser, checking live sites as people browse and warning them before they enter payment details on a suspected fake store.

“Shoppers shouldn’t have to become fraud investigators to buy a gift,” Coughlin added. “The extension puts a reliable second opinion right where people are shopping, at the moment it matters most.”

Scamwise MCP: scam checks for AI assistants (early access)

Savi Security is also opening early access to the Scamwise MCP, a Model Context Protocol server that will let AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude check websites, messages, and links against Scamwise’s scam intelligence before recommending or acting on them. As more consumers ask AI agents to find deals and complete purchases, the Scamwise MCP is designed to give those agents the same protection Scamwise gives people. Developers, platforms, and partners can request early access at https://scamwise.com/partners.

Holiday shopping is already ramping up, confirming that there is immediate need for a solution that helps shoppers navigate the season ahead.

“Our ad threat monitoring detected a sharp September surge ahead of the usual holiday escalation. Scammers are entering the shopping season with a head start, and that’s why consumer-reported data from Scamwise is critical to completing the fraud intelligence picture, connecting the threats we detect with the scams people experience,” said Chris Olson, Co-Founder & CEO, The Media Trust.

The Checkout Check: how to spot a fake store this holiday season

The report retires outdated red flags and replaces them with checks that work in 2026, including:

• Polish is no longer proof. A professional-looking site with a full catalog and return policy can still be fake.
• Being advertised doesn’t mean it’s legitimate. Stores found through social media ads should be treated with extra caution, especially new ones.
• Look up the store, not just the deal. Check how long the store has existed and whether anyone outside its own site has heard of it.
• When in doubt, check it first. Paste any link into Scamwise at scamwise.com or use the Scamwise Chrome extension before entering payment details.
• Stay alert after checkout. Fake delivery texts, order confirmations, and refund scams spike after big shopping days.

The full report, including methodology, charts, and the complete Checkout Check, is available at scamwise.com/holiday-scam-report-2026.

Methodology

The report is based on anonymized, aggregated consumer submissions to Scamwise between March 2026 and October 2026, including more than a million total submissions, 250,000+ shopping-site submissions, and 100,000+ sites judged “Definitely” or “Likely a Scam.” No personal data is included. External figures are cited where used. Full methodology is available in the report.

About Savi Security and Scamwise

Savi Security builds consumer protection against AI-powered scams and fraud. Its free scam checker, Scamwise, launched in March 2026 and gives anyone a fast, free, and anonymous second opinion on suspicious texts, calls, emails, websites, and more, with more than 1 million messages analyzed and growing. Scamwise is available on the web at scamwise.com, on iOS and Android, and now as a Chrome extension. Savi Security is backed by Acrew Capital, Magnify Ventures, TTCER, and Resolute Ventures, and is based in Los Angeles. Learn more at savisecurity.com.

Media contact
press@savisecurity.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/62540489-29bb-4c8e-bec2-c7557389dc10