Are you buying from a real website? Ominous Black Friday warning

• Australians reported losing more than $22 million to buying and selling scams over the past 12 months.
• Criminals are using AI to clone legitimate online stores and push them into shoppers’ social media feeds, according to the Australian Banking Association.
• Banks are urging shoppers to heed payment warnings and contact their bank immediately if they suspect a scam.

The banking industry has told shoppers to keep their guard up this Black Friday, warning that scammers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to clone legitimate online stores and slip them into social media feeds.

Australians reported losing more than $22 million to buying and selling scams over the past year, the Australian Banking Association (ABA) said in a statement on Monday.

“We are headed into a period of heightened shopping activity but unfortunately that also means heightened scam activity,” ABA chief executive Simon Birmingham said, as Australians hunt for bargains in the lead-up to Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30.

“Black Friday is now one of the busiest shopping times of the year and scammers will be using every trick in the book, hoping to swindle you out of your hard-earned cash.”

Shoppers should look out for fake websites and ads, many built with AI to imitate well-known brands, the ABA said.

The association flagged dodgy AI-generated listings on social media marketplaces where buyers are told to pay upfront, and bogus parcel delivery texts or emails that try to extract personal or financial details.

“Criminals are now turning to AI to build fake online stores that mirror legitimate websites, right down to the logos and product photos, and push it straight into your social media feed,” Birmingham said.

What are banks doing to stop scams?

Birmingham said banks were spending billions of dollars a year and working non-stop to keep scammers away from customers’ money.

“Banks are now using Confirmation of Payee to check you’re paying the right person, along with payment warnings and delays, and real-time tools that detect and block scams before the money’s gone,” he said.

Subscribe here for our FREE Tuesday and Thursday newsletter

Email address

Subscribe

He told anyone who suspects they have been scammed to contact their bank immediately, warning “the sooner your bank knows, the better chance they have of stopping your money ending up in a scammer’s pocket.”

How much will Australians spend?

The nation spent $23.8 billion over the two-week Black Friday period in 2025, up 4.6 per cent on the year before and 19.5 per cent more than in a typical fortnight, according to a report by CommBank iQ, a joint venture between the Commonwealth Bank and data science firm Quantium.

Online purchases accounted for nearly all of that increase, rising 9.3 per cent to $8 billion, while in-store spending barely moved.

This year, shoppers are budgeting an average of $346 for Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, 6.8 per cent more than last year’s $324, according to e-commerce platform Shopify.

More than half of the 2,000 Australians surveyed in July said economic conditions had hurt their holiday shopping plans, while 39 per cent had delayed purchases because of rising living costs.

AI is proving useful on both sides of the Black Friday sales, with the ABA warning fraudsters are using it to replicate authentic online stores and Shopify’s head of enterprise for Australia and New Zealand, James Johnson, saying shoppers were “researching, weighing up more options and increasingly using AI to help them find products that fit what they’re looking for.”