Scammers impersonate retail giant Boots to bag themselves almost nine million UK shoppers’ details
Cybersecurity company Huntress says that it has uncovered a large scale scam campaign that impersonated UK health and beauty retailer Boots, targeting nearly nine million email inboxes.
The campaign promised a free beauty sample pack in exchange for completing a short customer satisfaction survey. Anyone who took the bait was walked through a realistic looking fake Boots storefront and asked to hand over their name, email address, date of birth, phone number, home address, and ultimately their payment card details, under the guise of covering a delivery fee.
What makes this particularly striking is how the scammers pulled it off, Huntress observes. Rather than building their own suspicious looking website, they broke into the real website of a Bolivian government cultural institute and hosted the fake Boots store there. A government web address looks legitimate, passes automated spam filters, and gives victims no obvious reason for suspicion.
They also didn't use their own computer to send the emails. Instead, they quietly broke into a small UK business's server, installed legitimate bulk mailing software (the kind businesses use for newsletters), and were in the process of firing off emails to 8.9 million addresses when Huntress's security team caught them and shut it down. The small business had no idea any of this was happening.
Huntress says that it has shared its findings with Bolivia's national cybersecurity authority.
Its full research, including screenshots of the fake Boots survey exactly as victims would have seen it, can be found here.
2026 RTIH Innovation Awards
Cyber security will be a key focus area at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.
The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.
Check out our 2025 winners here.
Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.
In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”
“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”
He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”
Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended our 2025 gathering.
