7 Common Online Shopping Scams (and How to Avoid Them)

Online shopping scams feel personal when they happen to you, but they're rarely original. Almost all of them reuse a handful of well-worn playbooks. Once you can recognize the pattern, the same tricks that catch millions of people every year start to look obvious.

Below are the seven scams we run into most often, what each one actually looks like from a shopper's point of view, and the simplest way to protect yourself against it. Read to the end for a quick pre-purchase checklist and what to do if you've already been caught out.

1. Fake online stores

This is the classic. A polished-looking shop appears — often through an ad — selling desirable products at tempting prices. You pay, and either nothing arrives, or what shows up is a cheap counterfeit that looks nothing like the listing. By the time you realize, the store has often disappeared.

Fake stores lean heavily on stolen product photography and brand-new domains. The tell is usually in the details: no verifiable address, a contact page with only a form, prices that are consistently too good, and a domain that was registered very recently. Before buying from a store you don't know, check its age and look for real contact information.

2. Social-media ad scams

Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are now some of the most common places scams begin. You see a slick video ad for an irresistible product at an unbelievable price, tap through, and land on a store you've never heard of. The site is usually days old, and the products either never arrive or are wildly different from what was advertised.

The uncomfortable truth is that appearing in a paid ad doesn't mean a store is vetted. Treat any ad-driven shop you don't recognize as unverified until you've checked it out. If the only proof it exists is the ad that brought you there, that's not proof at all.

3. Clone and typosquat sites

Some scammers skip building trust and simply steal it. They copy a well-known brand's website almost pixel-for-pixel and register a lookalike domain — think "paypa1.com," an extra hyphen, or a different extension like ".net" instead of ".com." These clone sites often arrive via email or text links designed to make you act quickly.

Your best defense is boringly simple: always read the exact spelling of the domain in the address bar, and never log in or pay through a link you didn't go looking for yourself. When in doubt, type the brand's address directly or use a bookmark you trust.

4. Fake reviews and ratings

Reviews are supposed to be a shortcut to trust, which is exactly why scammers manufacture them. A fraudulent store might post dozens of glowing five-star reviews written in the same generic voice, or clone real reviews from a legitimate business to borrow its credibility.

Look for the fingerprints: praise with no specifics, a burst of reviews all posted in the same short window, identical phrasing across multiple reviews, and comments that don't actually describe the product. Genuine reviews are messier — a mix of ratings, specific complaints and compliments, and real detail. Cross-check on independent platforms rather than trusting on-site testimonials alone.

5. "Too good to be true" pricing

If a normally-expensive item is 80% off across an entire site, the discount isn't the deal — you are. Scammers use shockingly low prices as bait, because a big enough saving overrides a lot of common sense.

Real clearance sales are specific and limited: a few products, clear reasons, realistic markdowns. Scam pricing is uniformly unbelievable across the whole catalog. When every price looks like a once-in-a-lifetime steal, that consistency is the red flag, not the bargain.

6. Unusual payment methods

How a seller wants to be paid tells you a lot. Requests to pay by bank transfer, wire, gift card, or cryptocurrency are a major warning sign, because those payments are extremely hard to reverse. That's precisely why scammers prefer them.

Stick to payment methods that come with buyer protection, like major credit cards or reputable payment platforms. And be very wary if a "seller" tries to move the transaction off-platform — away from a marketplace's protections and into a direct transfer. Legitimate businesses are happy to take normal, traceable payments.

7. Phishing checkout pages

Some scams exist for one reason only: to harvest your card details. You go through what looks like a normal checkout, enter your information, and the data goes straight to a criminal. Sometimes the entire store is fake; sometimes a legitimate-looking site has been compromised.

Watch for checkout pages that look subtly off, a domain that changes unexpectedly when you reach payment, or a site that's already flagged by a threat blocklist. If anything feels wrong at the payment step, stop and close the tab — that hesitation is worth more than any single purchase.

Your quick pre-purchase checklist

• Read the exact domain name — watch for misspellings and odd extensions.
• Check how old the domain is; be wary of brand-new stores.
• Find a real address and phone number, not just a contact form.
• Search for independent reviews away from the store's own site.
• Be suspicious of uniformly unbelievable prices.
• Pay with a method that offers buyer protection.
• Run the URL through a free legitimacy checker before you pay.

What to do if you've already been scammed

If you think you've been caught out, act quickly. Contact your bank or card provider immediately to report the charge and ask about a chargeback — the faster you move, the better your odds of getting your money back. Change the password on any account you created on the scam site, especially if you reuse it elsewhere.

Then report it. In the US you can file with the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and reporting the site to Google Safe Browsing helps protect the next person. Being scammed isn't a personal failing — these operations are professionally designed to work. The best response is fast action and a sharper eye next time.

The habit that prevents most of this

Nearly every scam above shares a weakness: it can't survive a quick background check. A brand-new domain, hidden ownership, no real reviews, or a blocklist flag all show up in seconds if you look.

That's the whole idea behind our free checker. Before you buy from a store you don't already trust, paste the URL in and you'll instantly see its domain age, SSL status, ownership transparency, and whether it's on a known-threat list — enough to catch the vast majority of these scams before they catch you.