Belgian consumers have already been scammed out of more than €5 million this year by fraudulent online shops and dishonest sellers, according to figures from the Economy Ministry released on Friday.
The figures were released by DNS Belgium, the manager of more than 1.7 million Belgian domain names, just before Black Friday. In the majority of cases, the sellers have a foreign web address, such as a .com, with Belgian websites accounting for only 7% of cases.
In 2025 alone, the Economy Ministry received more than 4,500 reports of fraudulent webshops and dishonest sellers, for a total loss of €5,128,007.
"And this may only be the tip of the iceberg, as these figures only concern consumers who have actually reported fraudulent websites," emphasised DNS Belgium.
According to the network operator, the vast majority of reported suspicious sites have a .com extension (1,649 reports), followed by .nl sites (538). Only 317 reports concerned a .be domain name.
Domain names
For DNS, this difference is not a coincidence. In collaboration with the Belgian authorities, the company proactively takes down suspicious .be websites. It has already taken this action against 70 websites this year. It also proactively monitors the registration of each .be domain name, verifying, for example, that the identity data is complete.
It also appears that knowledge of domain names is still limited among Belgian consumers. Just over a quarter (27%) know exactly what a domain name is, while 17% don't really know, and 57% only know the basics.
Additionally, one in six Belgians (18%) neglects to consider a website's extension, which is the part that follows the period in a web address, such as .com, .be, or .nl.
