One Day Only and Cape Union Mart have warned consumers against cloned websites, which are rife on social media.

Listen to this article 6 min Listen to this article 6 min If you're shopping online, best you have your wits about you because distractions or multitasking could be your undoing. Research into online scams in Africa has blamed a lack of vigilance as the most common factor contributing to people falling victim. And fraudsters, ahead of the curve, are capitalising on that inattention by cloning retail websites, using similar branding and URLs, to trick shoppers of legitimate outlets.

Daily deals website, One Day Only, and Cape Union Mart have both warned that their sites have previously been cloned, advising shoppers to be extra vigilant.

Website cloning has a damaging effect on consumer trust in e-commerce, which is why retailers are educating customers and working with social media platforms and Google to remove cloned accounts.

One Day Only brand and campaign manager Jonathan Spencer says the problem has become out of hand, exacerbated in recent months by the ease of creating clones using AI, which enables anyone to create a new website within minutes.

"It's quite worrying that it's so easily done.

"Anyone can put prompts into an AI generator to clone a website, including the artwork. Within minutes, it...