Customers Warned Of Cyber Monday Scams During Holiday Shopping Frenzy

Cyber Monday sales are at an all-time high, and so are opportunities to get tricked into selling your personal data.

Add bookmark

Wandy Felicita Ortiz
11/27/2023

The digital customer experience has been on full display this week, with consumers filling their shopping carts—both virtually and in-person—to the brim with some of the steepest discounts they'll see this year. And despite customer backlash that the sales of today pale in comparsion to the early 2000s days where a stampede for a flatscreen TV were expected, shoppers are still opening their wallets to get what they can while they still can.

With options like buy-now-pay-later, installment options and good old layaway as options, customers are finding all sorts of ways to get their hands on goods with the swiftness we've all come to know and (sometimes) love in the 2020s. Reuters reports that Cyber Monday sales will hit $12 billion when all is said and done.

However, a new cyber security report reveals that this week, Americans will do just about anything to get a good deal, including unknowingly selling their personal data. "Almost half of Americans seem to have no fear of potential scams while shopping online—48% of the respondents are still ready to take advantage of this year’s biggest sales," the report from NordVPN reads. "35% of Americans reported that they have yet to decide whether to participate in Cyber Monday, Black Friday, or Christmas sales," as a result. On Black Friday alone, 35 millions customers were scammed online while signing up on those too-good-to-be-true deals.

RELATED: Meet The Beauty Brand Using Web3 To Redefine Customer Centricity And The Customer Journey

At a time when companies are aiming to personalize their customer experience and use advance tech tools to bolster their online reach, it can be a challenge for consumers to know if the information they're offering online is going to better tailor their shopping experience to their needs, or is revealing more personal data to cyber scammers than is necessary for any standard transaction. Data security at large has been a top concern for customers in 2023, especially with the emegence of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and the various ways in which organizations are applying them to their customer service workflows and customer engagement efforts.

RELATED: Think AI Is Outperforming Agents? Amid Financial Friction, Wayfair’s CEO Disagrees

"We have seen in the past that cybercriminals become very active during the shopping season, so the 160 million Americans who plan to take advantage of the deals this year should better be on their guard,” says Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN. “The main thing we encourage people to remember this shopping season is if the offer looks too good to be true or a lot of personal information is requested from you to get a deal—you are probably being scammed.”

“Fraudsters are becoming increasingly clever as technology evolves, and during this busy shopping period,” Michael Dinich, founder of the personal finance site Wealth of Geeks, shared with The Hill in the lead-up to the nation's busiest week of holiday spending. “it provides the perfect opportunities to exploit the increased volume of transactions and potentially catch shoppers off guard.”

He outlines a list of what customers can look out for to avoid being scammed while shopping online this week:

Urgent requests for updated billing information in efforts to get customers to enter their bank details into a fake website
Fake websites with deals on popular products, tricking shoppers into paying for items they will never receive
Phishing emails and texts which lead customers to disclose sensitive information through malicious links
Fake package tracking notifications, which can be used to infect devices with malware or direct tshoppers to phishing websites
Instant messages or social media posts with links to supposedly great deals, as scammers will often imitate URLs to retailers’ websites