Holiday Shoppers Beware: Look-Alike Domains Are Targeting Your Wallet | Venafi

Holiday Shoppers Beware: Look-Alike Domains Are Targeting Your Wallet | Venafi

Venafi research details the explosion of look-alike domains, which are often used to steal sensitive data from online shoppers. Find out what we discovered in our study.

Holiday Shoppers Beware: Look-Alike Domains Are Targeting Your Wallet | Venafi

The company analyzed suspicious domains targeting 20 major retailers in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Australia and found over 100,000 lookalike domains that use valid TLS certificates to appear safe and trusted.

According to Venafi’s research, growth in the number of look-alike domains has more than doubled since 2018, outpacing legitimate domains by nearly four times.

Key findings from the research include:

  • The total number of certificates used look-alike domains is more than 400% greater than the number of authentic retail domains.
  • Major retailers are important targets for cyber criminals. One of the top U.S. retailers has over 49,500 look-alike domains targeting their customers.
  • There are over six times more look-alike domains than valid domains among the top 20 online U.K. retailers.
  • Over half (60%) of the look-alike domains studied use free certificates from Let’s Encrypt.