AI is enabling scammers to target individuals during Christmas, allowing them to be targeted at scale and tricked into making bogus purchases or revealing financial details, making the holiday season a target-rich environment.
Generative AI’s ability to create sophisticated fakes enhances holiday scams, allowing fraudsters to deceive shoppers, impersonate cardholders, and hoard popular gifts for resale at high markups.
Consumers are alert to holiday deceptions, but loss of trust could impact retail sales during the golden quarter. Victims of online fraud face long-lasting pain and financial ruin.
2024–2025 Holiday Scams: It’s Time for More Complex Fraud
In the lead-up to this year’s Black Friday shopping spree, Christmas-themed phishing attempts increased by almost 700%, according to data from security vendor Darktrace. Visa also recorded an 85% increase in denied transactions on Cyber Monday alone.
The Rise in Holiday Cyber Scams Is Due to AI
The newest tools are being exploited by scammers to automate time-consuming, repetitive operations. The Thanksgiving to Boxing Day period has become the new holiday season for identity fraud, according to credit data expert Experian, where thieves use stolen personal data from fraudulent transactions to apply for financial items like personal loans and credit cards.
According to data released just before Black Friday 2024, identity fraud accounted for 83% of all frauds committed in the last quarter of 2023. Experian’s chief product officer for identity and fraud, Paul Weathersby, stated that fraudsters are usually more active over the holidays and employ “a multichannel approach” to deceive consumers into divulging personal information via phone calls, texts, and emails.
How Scammers Trick Careless Customers Using AI
Crims are using GenAI’s ability to mimic people and brands to obtain personal information, including making fake emails, ads, and web pages more believable. This trend extends beyond traditional holiday shopping scams, as AI-generated deepfakes are being used to swindle shoppers and foil financial verification tools.
McAfee’s 2024 analysis reveals that 1 in 5 Americans were deceived into buying fake products by celebrity doppelgangers last year, with tech-savvy Millennial and Gen Z shoppers being more affected, with one in three victims aged 18-34.
J.P. Morgan warns of deepfakes being used to impersonate account holders and gain access to their information. Regular Forensics reports that over a third of online companies have experienced deepfake voice and 29% video fraud. GenAI can create fake IDs or fake driver’s licenses for verification.
AI-orchestrated ‘Grinch bots’ have impacted up to 71% of UK shoppers this year, scouring online shopping sites to find desirable items and reselling them at inflated prices. This issue is not limited to Christmas; booking.com reports a surge in vacation scams during warm weather returns, with targeted phishing emails promising deals increasing by 900% last summer.
How to Avoid Holiday Scams in 2025
Retailers, banks, and security vendors are working to combat AI-powered shopping fraud. Visa has invested over $500 million in AI fraud detection, while Mastercard is using generative AI to double detection speed when a compromised card is used.
JPMorgan Chase uses AI to validate payments and detect anomalous activity, while Action Fraud published a list of 12 frauds of Christmas to help consumers spot fraudulent emails, adverts, and online offers.
The Bottom Line
B2C companies have faced numerous challenges in recent years, including rising inflation, disrupted supply chains, and an unprecedented in-store crime wave in the UK, which has prompted them to acknowledge the challenges they have faced and celebrate the fourth anniversary of the first COVID Christmas.
Retailers, banks, hotels, and airlines are increasingly relying on e-commerce to sell products and services but must convince a wary public that their apps, websites, chatbots, social media shops, push notifications, and emails aren’t spoofed by advanced online fakery.
