A 2-day-old fake Aroma-Zone store listed about 1,000 products at half price
On 26 September, two lookalike stores were selling Aroma-Zone's best-selling 3.5% hyaluronic acid serum for €2.98, next to a crossed-out €5.95, the official price. One, aromazone.de.com, was registered two days earlier and already lists about 1,000 products. The other, aromazone.sale-shop.org, runs different store software but the same shipping policy, word for word. A third brand-name domain, aromazone-oil.com, runs the first one's software and shows a generic make-up shop. Certificate logs and public scan archives show at least 31 Aroma-Zone lookalike hostnames since December 2024. Most were short-lived. One was a full copy of the official site, and the registry has since suspended it.
- 31
- Lookalike hostnames since Dec 2024
- 3
- Live on 26 September
- ~1,000
- Product pages on aromazone.de.com
- €2.98
- Fake price of a €5.95 serum
A full catalogue, 2 days after registration
aromazone.de.com is a third-level name under de.com, bought through a registrar on 24 September 2026, with a security certificate issued the same day. The store behind it is older. All 1,002 entries in its product sitemap carry a last-modified date of 5 August 2026. The shop was built first and pointed at a brand-name address later.
The pages copy Aroma-Zone closely: the wordmark, the French menu from 'Beauté' to 'Ingrédients & DIY', the founders' brand story on the 'about' page, and product names down to the pack size. Prices are halved. The serum is €2.98 against €5.95 on aroma-zone.com. The caffeine eye serum is €2.48 (official €5.50), the peptide anti-hair-loss serum €5.98 (official €12.50), the vegan collagen cream €4.50 (official €9.50) and 250 g of marine collagen €10.41 (official €21.95). The official prices come from Aroma-Zone's site as archived on 9 September 2026.
The product page promises delivery in three to five working days from France. The store's own shipping policy says 15 to 20 working days. No company name, registration number or address appears anywhere on the site, only a contact form.
The catalogue was dated 5 August. The Aroma-Zone domain it sits on was registered on 24 September.
What we caught
Registered on 24 September 2026. Its sitemap lists 1,002 pages, all last changed on 5 August, so the catalogue existed before the domain did. The logo, menu and 'Notre histoire' page are copied from Aroma-Zone. Every product we checked was about half the official price.
Both stores use Aroma-Zone's own packshot of the hyaluronic acid serum. With backgrounds trimmed, the image-hash distance to the official file is 1 out of 192 on each store: the same photograph.
The two clones run on different store software but share the same shipping policy, word for word, translation mistake included, and the same one-line footer describing Aroma-Zone as a French online shop. The policy promises free delivery in 15–20 working days.
We loaded the serum page three times, minutes apart. Stock read 23, 41 and 39 units left; '7-day purchases' read 417, 368 and 405; the countdown restarted at just under four hours each time. On aromazone.de.com, stock read 50, 22 and 158.
The evidence, piece by piece
Aroma-Zone's packshot, left, and the fake store's image, right. Image-hash distance: 1 out of 192. The store asks €2.98 for a €5.95 serum.
The same serum at the same €2.98 on different store software, with a countdown, a 'Trusted Store' badge and purchase pop-ups. Buyer initials blurred.
Three loads minutes apart: 23, 41 and 39 left in stock, and 417, 368 and 405 bought in seven days. The timer restarted each time.
Registered on 3 September 2026 on the same software as aromazone.de.com. For now it sells 45 unbranded products under a 'MAKEUP' logo.
eu-aroma.shop in October 2025 used the menu today's sale-shop.org clone still shows. aroma-zone.mom mirrored the official site in August 2026 and is now on registry hold.
2 clones, different software, one shipping policy
aromazone.sale-shop.org looks different. It uses another storefront system, with a centred logo, a 'Trusted Store' badge and pop-ups announcing purchases by shoppers with masked names. Its product images sit in folders dated 12 February 2025, which explains the 'Sélection Saint-Valentin' menu it still shows in September. The parent domain, sale-shop.org, was registered on 4 April 2026.
The text links the two. Its shipping, returns and 'about' pages match aromazone.de.com line for line, including a machine-translated sentence about orders and ships and the same footer line. Both stores also show the same Aroma-Zone serum photo. aromazone-oil.com, registered on 3 September 2026, runs on the same software and image servers as aromazone.de.com. For now it shows a generic 'MAKEUP' shop with 45 unbranded products, a brand-name domain ready to be filled.
Neither store needs stock to look busy. On aromazone.sale-shop.org the stock count, viewer count and weekly sales figure changed on every reload, and the 'sale ends in' timer restarted each time. We placed no order and entered no personal or payment details, so we cannot say what, if anything, would arrive. Both stores also list food supplements and essential oils, products buyers would swallow or put on their skin without knowing where they came from.
31 lookalike hostnames since December 2024
Today's stores are the latest in a longer series. Certificate logs and urlscan.io captures show at least 31 Aroma-Zone lookalike hostnames since December 2024. In summer 2025, five .shop domains, including sale-aroma-zone.shop and eu-aroma.shop, served Aroma-Zone-titled stores, some with the same menu as today's sale-shop.org clone. All of them have gone. Twelve more hostnames put 'aromazone' in front of generic 'sale', 'deal' and 'offers' domains. Most no longer answer.
Two 2026 domains went further. aroma-zone.mom, registered on 16 July, served a mirror of the official site, down to its consent banner, when captured on 18 and 19 August. Its registry status is now server hold, and it no longer resolves. aromazonesalefr.com, registered on 30 July, has shown a 'Suspected Phishing' warning from its network provider since at least 1 August. aromazone-fr.com, aroma-zone-fr.com and aromazone-be.com were registered between April and August 2026. On 26 September they returned only network errors.
Clean marketplaces, about 2 dozen hacked sites in search
An Amazon.fr search for 'aroma zone' returned no Aroma-Zone products, and the scanner's Amazon, Alibaba and AliExpress hits were unbranded diffusers and oils that merely matched the words. Temu and DHgate returned no Aroma-Zone listings. On eBay, 13 of the 20 listings the scanner found came from one reseller, seller A, at several times the French price: US $32.32 for the vitamin C serum Aroma-Zone sells for €7.95. We found nothing to show these are not genuine, so we describe them only as third-party resale.
Google Lens matches for two Aroma-Zone product photos surfaced about two dozen unrelated websites, from small businesses to institutions, with indexed pages carrying Aroma-Zone product names or photos. Every one returned 'page not found' when opened directly, a sign of compromised sites that show shop pages only to search traffic. Aroma-Zone's own site showed our automated browser a bot check, which we did not try to get past. Our official captures come from the Internet Archive's copy of 9 September 2026, and the scanner's own image search had no official photos to work from.
How to shut it down
The takedown plan, step by step, built from the evidence above.
Report both live clones now
Send aromazone.de.com and aromazone.sale-shop.org to their registrars and network providers, with the matching photo, the half-price listings and the shared policy text as evidence.
Get aromazone-oil.com suspended before it fills
It already runs on the clone's software. Ask for it to be suspended before Aroma-Zone products appear on it.
Monitor subdomains as well as domains
Twelve of the 31 hostnames were 'aromazone' in front of generic sale domains. Certificate-log monitoring for the brand name catches these the day they appear.
Tell customers you run no sale domains
Aroma-Zone's prices are already low, so a 50% discount looks believable. A clear note on the official site that it has no outlet or sale domains helps shoppers spot the copies.
A €5.95 serum is worth faking too
Fake stores usually promise big discounts on expensive products. Aroma-Zone shows the same model works on a €5.95 serum: halve the price, reuse the photos and the brand story, and add a countdown.
The domains change every few months. The catalogue, the policy text and the photographs stay the same, so each new store links back to the last, if someone is watching when it goes live.
Scan your own brand
What would the scanner find around your brand?
Run the same sweep across lookalike domains, storefronts, marketplaces, ads, and social accounts.
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