Festive retail scams put brands’ digital trust and promotions at risk
As India’s festive season approaches, mFilterIt warns that fake offers, phishing links, counterfeit listings and lookalike domains are increasingly exploiting retail promotions. The company cites a finding that 33% of Indians have encountered online scams during past festive seasons.
What happened
mFilterIt’s co-founder warns that festive promotions in India are increasingly copied by scammers through fake offers, counterfeit products, phishing and
Key facts
- 33% of Indians have fallen victim to online scams during past festive seasons
- 2025
Why this matters
Consider partnerships or acquisitions in phishing detection, counterfeit enforcement, domain monitoring and rapid takedown capabilities to strengthen retail clients’ promotional-security stack.
What to watch
- Spike in newly registered domains containing brand names plus terms such as sale, festive, offer, coupon or support.
- Increase in customer queries asking whether discounts, payment links, WhatsApp messages or social accounts are genuine.
- Growth in branded-search ads from unauthorized affiliates or domains with unusually high discounts.
- Marketplace complaints involving counterfeit products, manipulated ratings or sellers using brand imagery without authorization.
- Rising chargebacks, failed-delivery claims or payment disputes linked to promotional periods.
- Platform announcements on verified seller badges, advertiser identity checks, anti-phishing enforcement or expedited brand takedowns.
- Create a single official festive-offers hub and route all campaign links to it.
- Monitor lookalike domains, paid-search abuse, fake social accounts, counterfeit listings and impersonation ads daily during promotion peaks.
- Pre-agree takedown escalation paths with marketplaces, ad platforms, registrars, payment providers and cyber-response vendors.
- Use consistent official-account and verified-seller messaging across ads, influencer posts, CRM, packaging and customer support.
- Train support teams with scam-response scripts, refund triage rules and a rapid process for reporting fraudulent listings.
- Track fraud-related traffic diversion, customer complaints, chargebacks, abandoned checkouts and social sentiment as campaign performance metrics.