Between January and June 2026, Trend Micro's TrendAI tracked 35,538 malicious sites exploiting the FIFA World Cup, generating roughly 1.48 million visits from Japan. The scams fall into three categories: fake merchandise shops using SEO poisoning, near-perfect clones of official ticket sites that harvest credit card details and one-time passwords in real time to bypass MFA, and fake live-streaming sites that redirect users through malicious ad networks or harvest personal and payment data. Defenders are advised to navigate directly to official sites, scrutinize URLs, never enter OTPs on pages reached via search results, and use dedicated security software.
Table of contents
What the fake-stream operators are really afterStaying a step ahead of the scammersProactive security with TrendAI™ products46 Impressions