Fake Shop Report — August 2026
Fake Shop Report · edition August 2026 · published 2026-09-06 · numbers frozen at publication · CC BY 4.0
August 2026: 360 shops checked on HasTrust, 53% rated high risk; flagged shops were a median 571 days old at the check, trusted ones 9,666 days. 124 domains joined the blocklist. Numbers frozen at publication, CC BY 4.0.
What was checked
Every number on this page is a fact about the shops people checked on HasTrust in August 2026 (and, where marked, the whole corpus up to the end of that month). It is not a market estimate: people check shops they already doubt, so the risk shares run higher than the open web. The method is the same every month, which is what makes editions comparable.
| Verdict | This month | Lifetime |
|---|---|---|
| High risk | 177 | 258 |
| Caution | 52 | 136 |
| Mixed | 35 | 308 |
| Trusted | 66 | 1,573 |
Domain age is the signal that separates them
Age at the moment of the check. Flagged shops (score below 50) were a median 571 days old; trusted shops (75 and up) a median 9,666 days. 24% of all flagged shops were under 90 days old when checked.
Embed this chart (free, with attribution)
<a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08"><img src="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08/chart-age.svg" alt="Median domain age at check, flagged vs trusted — August 2026" width="640"></a> <p>Source: <a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08">HasTrust Fake Shop Report, August 2026</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
Where the risk lives: domain endings
Corpus-wide, high-risk share per domain ending (endings with at least ten checked shops). Cheap and newer endings (.shop, .top, .xyz, .store, .online, …) carry 94% high-risk shops against 15% on .com/.net/.org and country endings, and account for 13% of every flagged shop.
Embed this chart (free, with attribution)
<a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08"><img src="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08/chart-tld.svg" alt="Share of high-risk shops by domain ending — August 2026" width="640"></a> <p>Source: <a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08">HasTrust Fake Shop Report, August 2026</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
| Ending | Shops checked | High risk | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| .com | 1,812 | 260 | 14% |
| .nl | 45 | 8 | 17% |
| .shop | 29 | 28 | 96% |
| .uk | 24 | 0 | 0% |
| .fr | 17 | 4 | 23% |
| .de | 16 | 4 | 25% |
| .ca | 15 | 0 | 0% |
| .org | 14 | 1 | 7% |
| .net | 11 | 5 | 45% |
| .au | 10 | 3 | 30% |
US shoppers: .com and .us shops
1,816 .com/.us shops in the corpus (195 added in August 2026), 14% of them high risk. Lookalike domains of US brands on the watch list (amazon, walmart, target, bestbuy, costco, homedepot, lowes, nike, wayfair, temu, shein, lululemon, carhartt): 0 flagged, 0 confirmed by a human this month.
Blocklist
124 domains were added to the public blocklist in August 2026 (0 from HasTrust's own checks and the typosquat radar, the rest from partner feeds); 270 domains in total. The list is free: open data & API.
Embed this chart (free, with attribution)
<a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08"><img src="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08/chart-blocklist.svg" alt="Domains added to the HasTrust blocklist per month" width="640"></a> <p>Source: <a href="https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08">HasTrust Fake Shop Report, August 2026</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
Scam messages people pasted
606 suspicious messages were pasted into the scam checker in August 2026. 19% contained no website at all — a phone number, an e-mail address or a bare payment request, which is what modern shopping scams look like.
| Pattern flagged | Messages |
|---|---|
| Account threat scare | 3 |
| Credential phishing ask | 3 |
| Urgency pressure | 3 |
| Generic lure link | 2 |
| Impersonal mass phish greeting | 2 |
| Prize / lottery lure | 1 |
| Assessed risk | Messages |
|---|---|
| Unclear | 177 |
| High | 109 |
| Medium | 82 |
| Low | 42 |
What people asked
7,327 checks were typed in August 2026. Shares by shape of the question (raw queries are never published):
| Question shape | Checks |
|---|---|
| "Is this shop legit / a scam?" questions | 389 |
| Pasted links and domains | 111 |
| E-mail addresses | 18 |
| Other (product names, wishes) | 6,809 |
Method, licence, citation
- Scores and labels: how we score. Domain age is the RDAP registration date at the time of the check.
- Numbers are computed once at publication and never changed. The live, continuously updated version is /data/statistics.
- Licence CC BY 4.0: quote, chart and republish with a link to this page. Data: JSON · Markdown.
- Suggested citation: HasTrust, "Fake Shop Report — August 2026", https://hastrust.com/fake-shop-report/2026-08, published 2026-09-06.
- Press: /press · corrections: [email protected].