On November 6, 2026, the Austrian testing lab AV-Comparatives published the results of its Fake-Shops Detection Test 2026, which checks how well security software spots fraudulent online stores. Between October 1 and 7, researchers ran 500 randomly selected fake storefronts — all still live at the time of testing — plus 100 genuine shops, to make sure the tools didn't start flagging real sites by mistake, through more than 30 security products. Seven products earned certification: Avast Premium Security, Bitdefender Total Security, F-Secure Internet Security, Kaspersky Premium, NordVPN Next-gen antivirus, Norton 360 Deluxe, and Norton VPN Ultimate — each caught at least 80% of the fakes with zero false alarms.
The timing is deliberate, ahead of Black Friday on November 27, and the release cites figures from Savi Security: roughly 500 new fake shops appear online every day, their numbers have grown fivefold over the past two months, and 85% of these storefronts vanish within two weeks of launch — just long enough to collect prepayments from a few dozen buyers before closing up shop.
Why this isn't only a shopper's problem
The official framing of the test is consumer protection: antivirus software or a VPN blocks the user from reaching a suspicious site. But for the owner of a real business, there's a second, less comfortable scenario hiding here — it isn't the shopper who loses money on the fake store, it's the reputation of the genuine brand the fake is impersonating. Scammers no longer need to invent a fictional shop; it's faster and more profitable to copy the design, logo, and product range of an already-operating local business, register a look-alike domain (adding a hyphen, a different extension, or an extra letter), and run ads on Instagram or Facebook right in the middle of the sale.
Picture a small cosmetics shop in Porto running on the domain lojabeleza.pt. On the eve of Black Friday, an ad starts circulating in users' feeds with the same logo and similar product photos, but it links to lojabeleza-promo.shop — a domain registered a week earlier. Customers pay for their orders, the money goes to the scammer, nobody ships anything, and it's the real brand owner who ends up fielding complaints and chargebacks, because it's the real brand's name that disappointed buyers search for on Google and name in their comments.
What the test doesn't show — and why that matters
To be fair, the AV-Comparatives study isn't a perfect source for business decisions. It's a press release distributed via PR Newswire rather than an independent audit, and it doesn't disclose exact detection rates per product — only the final list of certified tools. The test covers a single week in October, so it misses the usual spike in new fakes in the last days before the sale itself. And most importantly, every product on the list protects the shopper who installed it, not the shop owner: antivirus software on a customer's phone does nothing to stop a scammer from registering a look-alike domain for your brand.
The practical takeaway for small and medium businesses in Portugal: installing antivirus software on customers' devices won't solve this — you need monitoring from the other direction. This comes down to three things you can set up once and stop checking manually. First, a regular automated search for domains resembling your own — most clones are variations on the original name and are easy to catch with a script that compares new registrations against your brand once a day. Second, monitoring Meta's and Google's ad libraries for ads using your logo that you never launched — both platforms offer brand-verification tools for exactly this, but almost nobody uses them manually. Third, one clear, consistent link to your "official store" across every social profile and in your site header, so a confused shopper who's already seen two different addresses can tell the real one from the fake in seconds, not after paying.
These are exactly the kinds of tasks — setting up automated monitoring for brand mentions and look-alike domains, with regular alerts to the business owner instead of manual checking — that Dayava handles every day: we build automations that save time and close gaps like this before they turn into a ruined Black Friday.
If you're interested in a similar solution for your business, leave a request at dayava.pt/contactos/.
Source: Taiwan News (PR Newswire), "Fake-Shops Detection Test 2026"