The holiday season brings good things: family, gifts, and a little extra cheer. It also brings a spike in scams, because scammers know shoppers are busy, distracted, and looking for a deal.
You do not need to become an expert to stay safe. You just need to know the handful of tricks that show up every year, so you can spot them the moment they land in your inbox, your phone, or your social media feed.
This guide covers the four scams older adults report most during the holidays: fake online stores, deals that are too good to be true, fake delivery notifications, and gift card scams. For each one, you will get the warning signs and exactly what to do.
What Are the Most Common Holiday Shopping Scams This Season?
The four scams to watch for this season are fake online stores, unbelievable discount ads, fake delivery texts, and requests to pay with gift cards. All four rely on the same trick: getting you to act fast, before you stop and check.
Scammers know that during the holidays, people are ordering more packages, clicking more ads, and moving faster than usual. According to the Better Business Bureau’s annual roundup of holiday scams, online purchase scams (where someone pays for an item that never arrives, or that turns out to be fake) are among the most reported scams to its Scam Tracker every year. The sections below walk through each type in detail.
Fake Online Stores
Fake online stores are websites built to look like real shops. They may copy a real brand’s logo and photos, or invent a brand new “store” that only exists to take your money.
Plain talk: fake online store
A website made to look like a real shop, built only to collect payments and personal information. It never ships the product, or ships something cheap and different.
Warning signs of a fake online store:
- The web address is slightly off, such as an extra word or a different ending (.net instead of .com).
- There is no phone number, no real street address, and no way to contact a real person.
- The only way to pay is by gift card, wire transfer, or a payment app, with no credit card option.
- The site was only created recently. You can sometimes tell because there are no product reviews anywhere else online.
- Prices are dramatically lower than every other store selling the same item.
Before you buy from a store you have not used before, open a new browser tab and search the store’s name along with the word “reviews” or “scam.” A few minutes of searching can save you a lot of trouble.
How to Check a Store Is Real
- Look at the web address bar. It should start with “https” and the store name should be spelled exactly right.
- Search for the store’s name plus “complaints” or “scam” in a search engine.
- Look for a real phone number and street address on the “Contact Us” page, then search that address to see if it matches a real business.
- Pay with a credit card, never a debit card, gift card, or bank transfer. Credit cards let you dispute a charge if something goes wrong.
- If anything feels rushed or pressured, close the tab and shop somewhere else.
| Real store | Fake store |
|---|---|
| Web address spelled correctly, ends in .com or a familiar domain | Web address has extra words, odd spelling, or an unusual ending |
| Contact page lists a phone number and address | No phone number, or the phone number does not work |
| Accepts credit cards | Only accepts gift cards, wire transfers, or payment apps |
| Reviews appear on independent sites | No reviews exist anywhere except the site itself |
Deals That Are “Too Good to Be True”
Every holiday season, ads appear on social media and in search results offering huge discounts, sometimes 70 percent off or more, on popular gifts. Some of these ads are real sales. Many are not.
Scammers pay to run these ads because social media platforms make it cheap and easy to reach thousands of people at once. The ad might even use a real company’s name and photos without permission.
Safety tip
If an ad promises a massive discount on a popular item and you have never heard of the store before, treat it as a red flag. Search the store’s name on its own, in a new tab, before you click “buy.”
A good rule of thumb: if the discount is bigger than anything you have ever seen for that item at a store you trust, slow down. Ask yourself who is actually selling it, and whether you can find that same seller anywhere else online.
Fake Delivery Notifications
This is one of the fastest growing scams during the holiday shopping season. You get a text or email saying a package could not be delivered, and asking you to click a link to reschedule, pay a small fee, or confirm your address.
The United States Postal Inspection Service and USPS have both warned shoppers about these fake delivery texts, a trick sometimes called “smishing” (phishing by text message). The link usually leads to a fake website built to steal your personal or payment details.
Plain talk: smishing
A scam text message (SMS) pretending to be from a real company, like a delivery carrier or a bank, designed to get you to click a link or reply with personal information.
Signs a delivery text is fake:
- It asks you to click a link to “reschedule” or “confirm” a delivery.
- It asks for a small payment to release your package.
- The tracking number does not match any order you actually placed.
- It arrives from a phone number instead of a short business code, or the wording feels rushed and urgent.
Say this
If a family member forwards you a delivery text asking what to do, you can say: “Real delivery companies don’t text links asking for payment or personal details. Let’s check the order directly on the store’s website instead.”
If you are ever unsure whether a package is really on its way, do not use the link in the text. Instead, open a browser and go directly to the retailer’s website or app, or the carrier’s official site, and check your order status there using your account.
Gift Card Scams
Gift cards are one of the most common ways scammers ask to be paid, and the holidays give them a perfect excuse: it looks completely normal to be buying gift cards this time of year.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, gift cards are a favorite payment method for scammers because once the card is used, the money is gone and almost impossible to get back. In one FTC report on gift card scams, cards from a single well known retailer accounted for more money lost to scams than any other gift card brand, with a median loss of $2,500 per person for that brand alone.
Safety tip
No real business, government agency, family member, or delivery company will ever ask you to pay with a gift card. If someone asks for a gift card code over the phone, by text, or by email, it is a scam. Every single time.
Common gift card scam scripts during the holidays include:
- A caller claiming to be from a delivery company, asking you to buy a gift card to cover a “customs fee” or “shipping fee.”
- A text or email claiming you won a free gift card, asking you to enter personal details to claim it.
- A message claiming to be a family member in trouble, asking you to send gift card codes urgently.
Type or say this
If you want a second opinion fast, you can ask a trusted AI assistant: “Someone is asking me to pay a delivery fee with a gift card. Is this a common scam?” A clear answer can help you pause before you act.
If you or someone you love has already sent a gift card code to a scammer, call the number on the back of the card (or the gift card company’s official customer service line, found on their real website) right away. Ask them to flag or freeze the balance. Then report the scam so there is a record of it.
A Quick Checklist Before You Buy or Click
- Search any new store’s name before ordering from it.
- Pay by credit card whenever possible, never with a gift card.
- Do not click links in unexpected delivery texts. Check your order directly on the retailer’s site instead.
- If a deal feels too good to be true, search the seller’s name on its own first.
- If anyone asks you to pay with a gift card, stop. It is a scam.
Our Scam-Stopper Kit (free when you join our email letter) includes a printable version of this checklist, so you can keep it by the computer or the phone during the busiest shopping weeks.
If you do end up clicking a bad link this season, do not panic. Our 10-minute checklist for what to do after clicking a scam link walks you through the exact steps, in order.
It also helps to know the payment methods that are always red flags, like gift cards, wire transfers, and cash sent by courier, so you can recognize trouble no matter how the request is worded. And if a “delivery” text lands in your messages this week, our guide on package delivery scam texts has more examples of exactly what scammers say.
Where to go from here
Holiday scams follow the same handful of patterns every year: fake stores, fake deals, fake delivery texts, and gift card requests. Once you know the patterns, they get much easier to spot, even when you are busy and shopping fast. For more ways to recognize and avoid scams like these year round, our book Scam-Proof walks through the most common scams older adults face, in plain language, with real examples.
