People have been urged to double check any messages they get
Shoppers have been urged to be wary of a parcel message or you could lose £700. Retail experts have urged people to be careful with the shopping spree coming up for Black Friday, as scammers will be looking to steal shoppers’ cash.
Jinesh Vohra is CEO of Sprive, an app which helps you earn cash rewards to go towards paying off your mortgage. He said: “Black Friday marks the start of a busy period for fraudsters.
“Action Fraud reported that shoppers lost £11.5million to online scams between November and January last year, with victims losing an average of £695 each.” One common ploy involves fraudsters sending out fake delivery messages claiming there is a problem with your parcel.
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This bogus message will include a link for you to reschedule delivery, where you hand over personal and banking information. Fraudsters also sometimes set up fake retail websites that mimic legitimate brands.
Mr Vohra warned: “Always double-check the website address and look out for spelling errors or unusual logos. If you’ve clicked through from an advert or social media post, it’s safer to go directly to the retailer’s official website.”
Stuart Morris, chief technology and product officer at compliance and anti-fraud group SmartSearch, warned that Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become “peak fraud season”. He said: For cybercriminals, this period offers the perfect storm: millions of consumers rushing to grab deals and businesses scrambling to process unprecedented volumes of transactions.
“The outcome is predictable — and costly. Last year, British shoppers spent over £9billion across Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with transactions peaking at 400 per second. For criminals, that’s open season.”
Figures from Auction Fraud suggest shoppers lost more than £11.5 million to online criminals between November 2023 and January 2024, up from £10.6million the year before.
More than 80,000 people were duped by a purchase scam in the first half of 2025. Meanwhile the average investment scam victim now loses £15,000.
Mr Morris warned these scams can be very convincing. He said: “This isn’t crude hacking but sophisticated social engineering — fake delivery texts, cloned websites, and ‘your order has shipped’ scams that trick victims into handing over their details or paying for goods that never arrive. While banks do an incredible job preventing the majority of attempted unauthorised fraud, the greatest vulnerability lies with Authorised Push Payment (APP) fraud, where the customer is tricked into sending the money themselves. In these cases, over a third of victims lose their money permanently.”
