Cyber Monday Scam Checks: How to Spot Fake Deals Before You Pay

Cyber Monday falls on Monday 30 November 2026, at the end of a run that starts with Click Frenzy's Black Friday early access on Friday 20 November and peaks from 27 to 30 November. Ten days of real discounts is also ten days of cover for fake ones.

The scale is not small. Australians reported $8.6 million lost to online shopping scams between January and September 2025, from 9,628 reports involving a loss out of 19,662 shopping scam reports, up 19% on the year before, according to the ACCC's National Anti-Scam Centre.

Almost nobody gets caught because they were careless. People get caught because a fake store looks like a real one, and the price looks like the sale they were expecting. Here are the checks that separate the two, and together they take about two minutes.

The price is the strongest single signal

Fake stores compete on one thing, the number. They cannot compete on service, delivery or returns, because none of those exist.

An illustration. Say a set of headphones sells for $449 at three well-known retailers, and a site you have never heard of lists them at $119. That is $330 off, or roughly 73%. A real retailer has to buy that stock from somewhere, so a discount that deep on a current, in-demand product is hard to explain. If a price sits far outside the range every other seller is charging, treat the price itself as the warning rather than the reason to hurry. Sold-out consoles and the year's must-have toys attract these listings most, because people want them enough to skip the check.

Read the address bar before you read the deal

Lookalike domains do most of the work here. The page can be a pixel-perfect copy of a real store. The address will not be.

• Extra words and hyphens. A familiar brand name with "shop", "outlet" or "sale" bolted on.
• Swapped characters. A zero standing in for an "o", an "rn" that reads as an "m", a doubled letter. Easy to miss at a glance.
• An unfamiliar ending. A brand you have always used on a .com.au address turning up on something else.
• The checkout moves. If the payment page jumps to a different domain, stop and read it.

The padlock is widely misunderstood. It means the connection between your browser and the site is encrypted. It says nothing about who runs the site or whether they will send you anything, and certificates are cheap, so a padlock on a fake store is normal. Our A to Z of cybersecurity terms is a plain-English glossary.

The safest habit is simple. Instead of following a link from an email, text or ad, type the retailer's address yourself, then find the deal inside the real site.

Check the shop is a real business

A real Australian business should be findable. A few minutes of checking tells you a lot.

• Look up the ABN. Legitimate Australian sellers list a business name and ABN, usually in the footer or terms. The free ABN Lookup service from the Australian Business Register shows whether it is real, matches the trading name and is active.
• Test the contact details. Search the address on a map and call the number. A warehouse that turns out to be a suburban carpark tells you plenty.
• Check the site's age. Free domain lookup tools show when a domain was registered. One created weeks ago on a store advertising "trusted since 2014" is a straight contradiction.
• Reverse image search the photos. If the same images appear on twenty other stores with different names, you are not looking at a seller's own stock.

An ABN alone does not make a seller trustworthy. It is one data point, and the pattern matters more than any single check.

Read the reviews properly

Reviews are easy to fake, so read them for shape rather than sentiment. Hundreds of five-star reviews posted in the same week is telling you something. So are reviews that praise the website rather than the product, near-identical phrasing under different names, and a record with no criticism at all.

Then look off-site. Search the store name alongside "review" or "scam", and read the comments under its own social ads. Comments switched off, or full of people asking where their order is, answer the question quickly.

How you pay decides whether you can get your money back

This is the part worth knowing before the sales start, because how you pay shapes your options afterwards.

• Bank transfer or PayID. Once the money lands it can be moved on quickly. A bank may attempt a recall, but recovery depends on whether the funds are still there.
• Gift cards. There is no recovery path. No legitimate retailer asks to be paid in gift cards, so a request like that ends it.
• Cryptocurrency. Transactions are generally irreversible, with no chargeback mechanism.
• Credit or debit card. Card payments run through the chargeback system, so your bank may be able to dispute the transaction if goods never arrive or are not as described. It is not automatic and time limits apply, but it is recourse the other methods do not offer.

Watch for the redirection. A site that accepts cards at first, then asks for a transfer because "the card system is down", is steering you away from the protection. That steer is the signal.

Social ads, marketplace listings and delivery texts

Plenty of fake stores now arrive through a social feed rather than a search. The ad looks professional, the account is new, and the store behind it has no history, so check the page's creation date and post history first. On marketplace platforms, pressure to pay a deposit to "hold" an item, or to move to a messaging app, is worth stepping back from. Paying on collection removes most of the risk.

Delivery is the other pinch point in November, because everyone is expecting parcels. Two traps repeat. The first is a "free" item carrying a shipping fee, where the small print signs you up to a recurring charge. The second is a text saying a parcel could not be delivered, asking for a small redelivery fee. The fee is not the point. Your card details are. Go to the courier's own site and enter the tracking number from your order confirmation instead of tapping the link. Our guide to 10 common scams and how to spot them covers the wider family.

If you have already paid

Scams are built by people who do this full time. Being caught by one is not a character flaw. What matters is what happens next, and speed helps.

• Call your bank straight away. Ask about a chargeback or a transfer recall. The sooner you call, the more options there are.
• Report it to Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre at scamwatch.gov.au. Reporting will not always recover the money, but it feeds the warnings that stop the next person.
• Change any password you entered, and anywhere you have reused it. Turn on two-factor authentication while you are there. More on that in 7 tips to improve your personal cyber security.
• Watch your statements for small unfamiliar transactions, sometimes used to test whether card details work.

Losing money set aside for Christmas is heavy. If it has knocked you around, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, and the National Debt Helpline offers free, independent financial counselling on 1800 007 007.

Your two minute check before you pay

• Read the URL out loud, character by character, and ignore the padlock.
• Compare the price. If it sits far below everyone else, let that be your answer.
• Find the ABN and contact details. Check the ABN is active and the phone number connects.
• Pay by card so a chargeback stays available. Never by gift card.
• Sleep on anything big. Urgency is the tool being used on you, and the 48 hour spending rule works as well against a fake deal as a real one.

Knowing what you set aside for the sales makes this easier, because an unbelievable price is simpler to walk away from when you already know what you planned to spend. The Budgeting and Insights tool is one way to keep that number in view. This article is general information only. It does not take your personal circumstances into account and it is not financial, tax or legal advice.