Money-stealing scams outpace credential phishing, Akamai finds

BankInfoSecurity reported on 29 October 2026 data from Akamai showing that online scams such as fake stores, investment scams, technical support scams and payment fraud doubled between July 2025 and June 2026, to 6.4 million detected cases. Over the same year, traditional phishing for credentials through brand impersonation dropped significantly, although the number of attempts was on par with scams.

Akamai's Advisory CISO Steve Winterfeld told the outlet that account takeover is losing popularity as AI-based threat detection, two-factor authentication and DNS and web filtering make it harder. In one retail campaign that Akamai cited from Bolster AI data, a single IP address hosted more than 1,200 look-alike .shop domains reusing the same payment pages to harvest card data.

Attackers also rotated infrastructure faster: according to Akamai, a phishing campaign that used to stay active for 48 days at the end of 2025 lasted 22 days by mid-2026. In one incident, stolen cards were tested with small guest-checkout purchases, ahead of larger fraud or resale.

Why it matters The shift moves losses from compromised accounts to direct payments by deceived customers, which concerns fraud teams as much as security teams. With campaigns living about three weeks, detection of look-alike domains and card-testing patterns has to work in days, not in monthly reviews.