A scammer doesn’t have to break into a company’s systems to put its customer relationships at risk. Borrowing its name may be enough.
That’s the business problem at the center of a new report from BrandShield, a digital risk protection company whose survey of 1,029 U.S. adults suggests that anxiety about online fraud is spilling over into distrust of brands, marketplaces and the everyday mechanics of shopping online.
Nearly nine in 10 respondents, or 87.1%, said they were concerned that artificial intelligence is making scams harder to detect. Almost half, 46.8%, described themselves as very concerned. Meanwhile, 82.1% said they were more worried about online threats than they were a year earlier, including 52.3% who said they were much more worried.
Those numbers measure consumers’ perceptions, rather than whether AI-powered scams are objectively harder to identify. But for businesses trying to persuade people to click an ad, enter payment details or trust a storefront, perception can matter well before a transaction takes place.
The report’s more consequential finding may be what consumers say they will do after a brand is impersonated: pull back from the legitimate business.
In the survey’s findings on responses to brand impersonation, 30.2% said they would stop buying from the affected brand online altogether, while 31.6% said they would stop clicking its ads. Another 39.2% said they would no longer share personal information with that brand online.
That creates an uncomfortable possibility for companies: explaining that a fraudulent account or website was unaffiliated with the business may not be enough to restore a shopper’s confidence.
“AI has made it cheap and fast to build convincing fakes, whether that’s a phishing email, a customer support chat, a website, or an entire storefront, and the instincts people used to rely on to catch it don’t hold up anymore,” BrandShield CEO Yoav Keren said in the release.
The survey does not establish how many reported scams used AI, or test respondents’ ability to distinguish legitimate content from fraudulent material. Its findings are better understood as evidence of consumer anxiety and reported experiences than as a measurement of AI’s effectiveness as a fraud tool.
Still, those experiences appear widespread within the sample. More than half of respondents, 52.4%, said they had been targeted by a scam in the previous 12 months. Among those who encountered suspicious activity or a scam, 63.6% said it involved someone impersonating a real company, bank, retailer or another organization they trusted.
For an impersonated business, that is a particularly difficult kind of exposure. The familiarity that helps a company attract customers also gives an attacker something recognizable to imitate.
And the potential damage reaches beyond a single fraudulent purchase. A shopper who becomes reluctant to click the real company’s advertising or provide information on its website could become harder to reach even after the original scam disappears.
The report does not measure actual lost sales, advertising performance or customer departures. Its findings on future behavior are statements of intent. But they identify several places where a fraud experience could introduce friction into a legitimate business’s relationship with its customers.
The distinction between blame and behavior is especially striking.
In a separate question about responsibility for scams on social media or marketplaces, 26.5% of consumers said they would hold the scammer most responsible. Almost as many, 26.2%, chose the platform. Just 4.2% selected the impersonated brand.
Those results should not be read as proof that the same respondents who absolved a brand also planned to abandon it. They come from different questions. Taken together, however, they suggest that avoiding blame and maintaining consumers’ willingness to transact are separate challenges.
Some respondents described a narrower retreat. In the brand-related findings, 42.4% said they would now buy only from brand-affiliated websites. That could preserve a customer relationship while changing where purchases happen, potentially complicating the role of marketplaces, advertising and other routes to a sale.
For that response to work, though, shoppers still need to identify which website actually belongs to the brand — precisely the judgment that convincing impersonation can make difficult.
Marketplaces face their own version of the trust problem.
Among respondents who had used a marketplace platform, 34.5% said they had experienced fraud, a scam or a counterfeit item. The release also reports that 79.5% of marketplace shoppers said a scam or attack changed how they shop.
The changes described include buying only from trusted sellers or official brand sites, cited at 28.6%, and verifying sellers before purchasing, at 27.6%. Another 10.6% said they stopped using the platform entirely.
For a marketplace, those responses could have different consequences. More careful seller verification may add steps before a purchase. A preference for familiar sellers could make it harder for an unfamiliar merchant to win a first order. Leaving the platform would be a more direct loss.
These are possible business implications, rather than outcomes the survey measured. But they illustrate why fraud prevention can affect more than the handling of an individual complaint.
BrandShield’s platform breakdown lists TikTok Shop at 34.7% and eBay at 28.4% among places where respondents reported fraud, followed by Craigslist, Etsy, Poshmark, Mercari and Depop.
For brands and marketplaces, getting a fraudulent storefront taken down may resolve one incident. Getting the customer comfortable enough to shop again is a separate task.
Learn more at https://www.brandshield.com/.
