Key Takeaways:
- Scams are always popular, but they tend to increase during the holidays.
- Holiday scams in 2025 include some old (rotten) chestnuts and high-tech new additions.
- Spokeo People Search can help avoid holiday fraud.
At their best, the holidays should be the time of year when spirits are high, joy is in the air, and people are ready to chill with their loved ones. Unfortunately, it’s also a time of year when scammers take it upon themselves to become real-life Grinches. While scams, phishing, and grifts are as evergreen as your Christmas tree, crooks tend to blast into overdrive during the holiday season.
And that’s because scammers know cash is flowing during the holidays, from gift shopping to charitable donations, and they want to take that cash right out of your stocking (or bank account). So, want to know how to avoid holiday scams? We’ve got you covered with eight categories of scams to put on this year’s naughty list.
Holiday Text Scams
Phishing, unfortunately, is a perennial type of scam. Around the holidays — when it becomes ice phishing, if you will — it works the same. A scammer posing as someone else or, as a legit business or organization, reaches out to you (in this case via text, but it can happen by phone, DM, or email, too) and in some way tricks you into sending a payment, or providing private or financial account info. This can be through text conversation, clicking a link that prompts you to enter valuable private information, or by installing malware on your device that harvests that information.
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Some of the most common types of text-based holiday scams include:
- Phony package delivery scams
- Fake job opportunities
- Bogus fraud alerts from trusted companies
- Made-up notices about unpaid tolls (that look very official)\
- “Wrong number” texts
Stay safe: This one applies to every scam under the sun, from New Year’s Day 2025 to New Year’s Day 2026 and every one beyond: never, but never, click on a link or provide your private information unless you know the person, business, or organization on the other end is legit beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Seasonal Charity Scams
The holidays are a season of giving, with loved ones and charities on the receiving end of a whole lot of goodwill. From established charitable organizations to personal GoFundMe campaigns, there’s no shortage of options for expressing your generosity, but you’ll want to make sure your money is going where you intend, and not into a scammer’s pocket via a nasty dose of charity-flavored phishing.
Stay Safe: When you donate this holiday, be cautious of phone calls, mail, and bogus websites attempting to solicit funds for fictitious charities or even masquerading as well-known, legitimate charities. Just like when shopping online, always go directly to the website of the intended charity, and verify unfamiliar charity orgs with sites like Charity Navigator or GuideStar. Also, be on the lookout for fake crowdfunding efforts, which will often fabricate some compelling story from scratch or even exploit a real tragedy from the news — they’re even sneakier with AI-generated images and text this year.
Social Media Scams
Our hearts are open for community and good company during the holidays, and Scroogish scammers love to take advantage of that warmth with a cold dose of social engineering scams. While social media DMs can be the vector for all sorts of varieties of holiday scams, social sites are especially conducive for catphishing, in which a scammer eventually tricks you into sending money or revealing valuable private info that can lead them to your money by appealing to your emotions, often with an intricate long-distance relationship or an extended con.
Stay safe: Cozy up with a hot cocoa and read our guide on how to avoid catfishing.
Military Personnel Scams
Speaking of catfishing, military personnel scams are a common catfishing theme. These types of scams rely on emotional appeals and generating sympathy, all while making up excuses for why the catfisher just can’t meet in person, and hiding behind the guise of a veteran really facilitates that for scammers. Catfishers will often claim to be military personnel who can’t meet because they’re traveling or stationed far away, or ask for money to buy necessary supplies (even though the military doesn’t charge for necessities or travel), or to travel home to see their families.
Stay safe: Two things should always, always set off alarm bells when it comes to catfishing scams: 1) anyone you’ve never met in person asking you for money, and 2) a long-distance connection’s continued refusal to hop on a video call or meet in person. Those flags are redder than Santa’s cheeks.
AI Holiday Scams
Unfortunately, grifters have upped their holiday shopping scams game with easily accessible generative AI tech. AI-powered holiday scams cook up fake images for products that either make them look way more impressive than they are, hawk fake videos promoting made-up holiday shopping deals, or straight-up generate products that don’t exist.
The tech can also be used to easily generate convincing images and text for fake and spoofed holiday shopping sites (more on that later), or deepfaked images, voices, and video for phony social media profiles out to phish and catphish you, and even serve as autonomous chatbots for social engineering or phishing scams.
Stay safe: Look for telltale signs of AI image generation, like incorrect anatomical details (especially in the hands and fingers), unreadable or gibberish text, details that mush together or don’t make visual sense, and an overly smooth, “airbrushed” look. For text-based AI, ask a lot of questions and look for inconsistencies in the responses.
Gift Cards
While gift cards make great gifts for folks you can’t quite pin down, they’re also a gift to scammers. That’s because gift cards are nearly impossible to trace or refund. As such, gift cards appear in all sorts of holiday scams and year-round scams alike, from phishing to phone scams to text scams and beyond; if anyone asks you to pay them via gift card, you’d better think twice.
When it comes to holiday gift card scams, the biggest one to watch out for is simply buying empty gift cards. While it’s tempting to buy a gift card that’s worth more than the seller is charging, there’s often a very scammy catch: that gift card doesn’t actually have any money left on it.
Stay safe: Only buy gift cards directly from authorized stores, not auction sites. No matter how good the deal, gift cards are not something worth buying secondhand. Make sure any physical gift cards you’re purchasing haven’t been tampered with, as people will sometimes steal the card info without actually taking the gift card. Avoid making any payments with gift cards outside of their intended store; requesting payment via gift card is a scammer red flag.
Holiday Shopping Scams
As sure as death and taxes, holiday shopping explodes between Black Friday and New Year’s Day, and that means a whole lot of scamming pops off, too. With online shopping being a pillar of gift purchasing, scammers have taken it upon themselves to drum up a bunch of not-so-jolly shenanigans. Here’s what to look out for in ‘25:
- Fake websites. Everybody loves a deal, but unknown sites and sellers can often be a case of too good to be true. You order, you pay, but no product ever arrives. The vendor either disappears or “ghosts” you and can’t be contacted. That’s because the shopping site was a total fake, made just to trick you into giving money to a storefront that doesn’t exist.
- Spoofed websites. Similarly, website spoofing is a tactic used by scammers to clone legitimate websites to trick users into thinking they are shopping at a genuine store brand. In this case, the entire site is bogus, but designed to pop up near the top of your search results. Like fake sites, they’ll take your money, credit card data, and private information, keeping the former and selling (or exploiting) the latter. This year, Amazon, Temu, and luxury brands will be among the most spoofed.
- Secondhand scams. OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace are great places to score holiday thrift hauls, but approach with caution. Alongside faux brand-name counterfeits and used products sold as new, peer-to-peer online marketplaces are a breeding ground for phishing scams.
Stay safe: When it comes to online holiday shopping, always be sure to do a little research before buying from new or unknown sites. If information doesn’t add up, or the deals are just way too good, think twice. Even if you do think you know who you’re buying from, never go to a shop’s website through links you received in an unsolicited email or text, and always double-check that the URL is correct (check for misspellings of common company and brand names) and secure.
Mail Scams
During the holidays, packages are more numerous than falling snowflakes, so when a text or email pops up letting you know your package has gone missing, there’s a good chance it’ll pique your interest. The problem is that it might not really be FedEx, UPS, Amazon, or USPS on the other end — it could be a scammer hoping you’ll click on the link and give up valuable private information in what you think is a bid to get your stuff.
You might also fall victim to a brushing scam, in which a company sends you a bunch of free stuff you didn’t ask for. While it sounds nice at first, it could be an early step on the road to identity theft, as scammers are confirming that your address and contact info are valid.
Stay safe: Delivery companies will never ask you to pay or provide private info in order to track a package. Likewise, return any unsolicited packages back to the sender.
How to Avoid Holiday Scams? Santa’s Biggest Helper
Whether you’re vetting a charity, making sure a shopping site is legit, running a check for AI tomfoolery, or trying to stay safe from any number of holiday scams this year, chances are you have a name, phone number, address, or email address for the source you want to double-check.
That’s where a Spokeo People Search works its holiday magic. Just enter the info you have, and we’ll instantly search literally billions of records to find out if the person you’re dealing with really is who they say they are. It might just be the closest thing you’ll get to a real-life version of Santa’s Naughty and Nice list, this year and every year after.
As a freelance writer, small business owner, and consultant with more than a decade of experience, Dan has been fortunate enough to collaborate with leading brands including Microsoft, Fortune, Verizon, Discover, Office Depot, The Motley Fool, and more. He currently resides in Dallas, TX.
Sources
USA Today – Scams Are Exploding During the Holidays. Here’s How to Stay Safe.
Federal Trade Commission: Top Text Scams of 2024
Norton – 16 Holiday Scams to Watch Out for In 2025
RCS Professional Services – Holiday Scams to Watch Out for in the 2025 Holiday Season
Axios – Top Scams Targeting Shoppers This Holiday Season