Whenever there’s a new fad or trend, scammers aren’t too far behind to take advantage of it. Bad actors are creating thousands of DeepSeek look-alike websites in hopes that you’ll hand over your personal details to them.

Fake DeepSeek Websites Are on the Rise

As spotted by several security researchers, we’re seeing a huge wave of scammer-owned domains and websites targeting people who want to try out the new DeepSeek AI tool. If you’ve been out of the loop, this new tool shook up the AI scene after it entered the public eye in late January—we’vegiven DeepSeek a try for ourselvestoo.

Dominix Alvieri on X showed some examples of scammer-run domains aimed at tricking people interested in DeepSeek, including one example that claimed it was an “AI plateform.”

User “Who said what?” on X also posted an example of a look-alike page with a text-stuffed URL. After breaking down how it works, it looks like the scammer designed the website to spread the Lumma Stealer malware. We last saw this payload only a few weeks ago, whenfake Reddit websites were peddling Lumma Stealer downloads.

Scammers May Try to Capitalize on DeepSeek’s Downtime

So, why are scammers making these domains en-masse? It’s all well and good to own a website, but bad actors need a way to spread the URL around the internet to get people to click on it. Without a delivery vector, nobody will see them.

There’s a chance that scammers are currently capitalizing on DeepSeek’s spotty uptime. The company reported that cybercriminals were launching DDoS attacks against the website, preventing people from using DeepSeek. This gives scammers an avenue to play off of people who really want to check out the new AI model.

Scammers may try sending their fake URLs around while claiming that DeepSeek is back up after an outage, or claim that they’ve found an alternate URL that isn’t affected by the downtime. We may also see scammers sending emails encouraging people to click on the link. Perhaps they’ll offer exclusive beta access to a new feature or advertise a new payment plan for advanced tools.

Either way, now’s a good time to keep an eye out for fake DeepFake clones and remember all of thecommon ways to spot a phishing website.