Welcome to Scam Friday. No I didn’t misspell. The annual consumer splurge has always been catnip to fraudsters but AI has made it a veritable paradise for them.
Black Friday has long been my least favourite transatlantic import, worse even than the scheduled phone call, that godawful phrase “reaching out” (it should only be used by the Four Tops) and the pop tart. There’s just no excuse for using jam as a means of adding artificial flavour to cardboard.
But Black Friday is worse than the lot of them. Even retailers hate it, knowing full well that when it comes to taking part they’re damned if they do and they’re doubly damned if they don’t. I have to admit I loved the phrase used by one unnamed member of the tribe in an interview with Retail Times who called it “an American vortex of misery.”
But if it hurts the people who run retailers, fraudsters are making it even worse for their customers. Visa puts the average loss at £125 per person. The average, remember. Some people lose an awful lot more.
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‘Watch the web: over the next few days: you’re going to see stories about the old couple who had their bank accounts cleaned out or the carer whose kids aren’t going to get any Christmas pressies despite their diligent saving’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Watch the web: over the next few days: you’re going to see stories about the old couple who had their bank accounts cleaned out or the carer whose kids aren’t going to get any Christmas pressies despite their diligent saving.
Generative AI is the villain of this piece. It’s on a par with the blackest hearts Shakespeare dreamed up, Iago level nasty (read your Othello). Fed up with people telling you to “get with the program” when it comes to Silicon Valley’s new toy? Below is your riposte.
“Everyday online habits – such as skimming headlines, resharing without verifying and trusting AI-generated content – are creating new vulnerabilities that scammers are quick to exploit.”
That was from Visa. A survey conducted for the payment company by Opinium, between August and September 2025, found 44 per cent of respondents believed content to be genuine only to later discover it was AI-generated fakery. Almost a third (32 per cent) rarely read beyond a headline before forming an opinion. Almost a fifth (19 per cent) reshared posts without checking accuracy.
Export those trends to emails, ads and social media posts touting offers, using generative AI to mimic well-known brands, and writing tools to remove the errors that used to help us spot scams, and you can see why Black Friday Fraud Ltd would join top tier tech firms if it could be floated on Wall Street.
This is a global problem. Cyber security company Darktrace said brand impersonation was “one of the techniques that stood out, with threat actors creating convincing emails – likely assisted by generative AI – purporting to be from household brands including special offers and promotions”.
Last year if found a staggering 201 per cent rise in phishing attempts mimicking retailers in the week before America’s Thanksgiving (November 15-21). It’s no coincidence that this is when legitimate businesses are ramping up their Black Friday campaigns.
A word to the wise: Darktrace said that in an analysis of global consumer icons (Apple, Alibaba, Netflix) Amazon was the most impersonated brand “making up 80 per cent of phishing attempts”.
It warned that the problem with generative AI impersonation is that it falls outside retailers’ traditional security remit and infrastructure. They can police websites, wall off customer data and card details (this isn’t always successful) and so on. Eliminating fakes based in Russia, China, West Africa, hell just about anywhere? Much harder. Their dodgy web domains – Waimart rather than Walmart for example – are proliferating like maggots on dead meat.
The problem could, probably already is, act as an economic drag. The economic damage is real, and while big brands suffer it is the small fry who inevitably come off worse. It’s the little guy whose business you haven’t heard of with the attractive offer you just can’t bring yourself to indulge in because you fear it might be a scam even if it isn’t.
“An estimated 9m people have changed how they shop online after being scammed and over a third (35 per cent) of people targeted say they now avoid shopping with smaller or unfamiliar brands,” said Visa.
I can honestly say I’ve yet to fall victim. The worst of the web I’ve encountered is misspelling a domain name while researching a piece and then getting plagued by pop-ups. The only loss was an afternoon working with our IT people to get rid of the damnable things.
But my beloved late grandfather became particularly prone to online scams as he got older, and that was when they were much less sophisticated than the hellish AI powered artistry of today. My mother and my aunt, who looked out for him, were often left tearing their hair out.
It’s tempting to urge tougher sentences, to have the courts throw scam artists into the deep, dark hole, of the UK prison system and leave them rot there. But, again, they’re often organised crooks from half way around the world. How do you bring them to book?
The only real solution is for us to police our own habits: never click through on emails or social media ads. It’s the clickthrough that kills. Instead, use them as prompts. Go to the website yourself and jump in, if you like the offers they tout. Check your spelling before you hit return. Double check the domain name. Check everything twice. Three times.
Better still, do as I suggested. Hide until Black Friday is over. There’s always another sale.