Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days of the year — and prime season for scams. Now in 2025 scammers are more emboldened than ever, thanks to AI.

According to research from cybersecurity company Guardio, there has been a 30x increase in shopping-related scams and fraudulent text messages over the past month. November is already the top month for online scams in 2025, even before Thanksgiving weekend.

Guardio has also seen a rise in the number of unique email addresses promoting Black Friday-related campaigns in the past week — by more than 500 percent.

What's driving the rise? The company points to research from earlier this year from the organization Anti-Phishing Working Group that found that 76 percent of phishing websites now use AI-generated content.

AI isn't

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