Black Friday and Cyber Monday scams are expected to reach unprecedented levels this season. Kansas consumers should be on high alert as the state lost $58 million with 2,399 victims to online scams last year. 

Considering a record $221.8 billion in online shopping sales are projected this holiday season, consumers are likely to lose even more money to scams unless they learn how to avoid them.Social Catfish, a company preventing scams using reverse search technology, released a study on the State of Internet Scams 2023 using 2023 data from the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC. 

Three online shopping scams to avoid

1) Fake stores: scammers are advertising incredible deals on social media. Once you click the link, it takes you to a look-a-like website of a major brand. Any gifts purchased will never arrive.

How to Avoid: Triple check the spelling of the URL. Fake sites are often one letter off. 

2) Fake gift cards: gift cards are a great holiday gift, and people can save money by purchasing gift cards from e-commerce sites like GiftCards.com. However, scammers are on these sites selling gift cards that arrive with no balance. 

How to Avoid: perform a reverse search to verify the seller's identity. 

3) Fake shipping notifications: scammers are capitalizing on the increased number of packages delivered during the holidays by emailing or texting a delivery notification with a “tracking link.” This is a phishing link used for identity theft. 

How to Avoid: only track packages on the official UPS, USPS, or FedEx websites. 

This story was updated on Nov. 22 to add a link and to reflect that Giftcards.com is an ecommerce site to purchase gift cards of all types. It is not a site where people can resell their gift cards to others