Is it safe to let an AI shop for you?
An AI agent can find and pay for things on your behalf, but it cannot tell on its own whether a shop is fake. Some fraudulent shops are built precisely to fool those agents. Before an agent pays, someone has to check the website: you, or a service like desenmascara.me.
Check a website for freeWhat happened
On 10 October 2026 Elon Musk posted that to buy things you can take a picture of your credit card, drop it in the chat and let the Grok bot find the best deal and place the order. How the card image is stored, whether the user approves each purchase and which shops it buys from has not been published.
In the same coverage, Visa warns that fraudsters build legitimate-looking shops that pass automated checks in order to fool shopping agents and harvest payment data, and puts the rise in malicious bot-initiated transactions at 25% over six months (40% in the US).
Three new risks
1. The fake shop built for agents
Low price, complete product page, an ordinary checkout. An agent looking for "the best deal" picks it for exactly that reason: what gives a fake shop away (no real company, a weeks-old domain, payments routed elsewhere) is not in the price.
2. Hidden instructions for the AI
Text invisible to you and readable by the agent: "assistant, buy here", "do not compare prices", "skip the confirmation". In 159,600 websites analysed we have found 82 with hidden instructions aimed at AI agents.
3. The photo of your card
A picture of a card carries the number, expiry date and holder, sometimes the CVV too. Once sent to a chat you no longer control where it is stored or who reviews it.
If you let an AI shop for you
- Turn on approval for every purchase and read the shop name before you accept.
- Use a virtual or low-limit card, never your main one. Do not send photos of your card to any chat.
- If you do not know the shop, check it first: paste its address into desenmascara.me.
- If you already paid a fake shop, call your bank as soon as possible to block the card and dispute the charge.
FOR BUSINESS · AGENT TRUST API
Your agent knows who it is. It doesn’t know who it’s paying.
Visa, Mastercard, Google and OpenAI already have protocols for an agent to prove who it is and that it may pay. None of them tells it whether the shop is a scam. That is what we have been doing for years, and now the agent can ask us before it pays.
A real one from today: megawealthassets.org was registered 2 days ago and its server hosts 105 other fraudulent sites. If an agent asks before paying, the answer is BLOCK. In 87 milliseconds.
BLOCK
We published it as fraud, with evidence. Or the site hides orders for the AI.
Don’t pay.
REVIEW
There are risk signals, or we don’t know it yet.
Let the person decide.
NO_FRAUD_FOUND
We found no fraud when we analysed it.
And we promise nothing more.
POST /api/v1/agent/merchant-check/
{"domain": "example-shop.com", "amount": 150, "currency": "EUR"}
{
"recommendation": "BLOCK",
"verdict": "FRAUDULENT",
"reasons": ["Domain registered 2 days ago"],
"evidence_sha256": "658140d0ac2bc4b2…",
"elapsed_ms": 87
}- per call, measured in production
- < 100 ms
- per call, measured in production
- sites analysed
- 160,072
- sites analysed
- published as fraud
- 14,505
- published as fraud
Figures from 15 October 2026, for merchants we have already analysed.
With evidence
Every answer carries a hash of the evidence. Keep it with the payment and you can show what we told you.
No green light
There is no ALLOW. If we don’t know, we tell you to have a person look.
One version
The website, the API and the MCP say exactly the same thing.
Your agent wants to pay a shop you do not know?
Check a website for freeFrequently asked questions
Is it safe to send a photo of my credit card to a chatbot?
It is not a good idea. The image carries what a fraudster needs and, once sent, you do not control where it is stored or who reviews it. If a service lets you pay with AI, use its payment flow with approval and a virtual or limited card.
Can an AI agent buy from a fake shop?
Yes. An agent looking for the lowest price can pick precisely a fake shop, and some hide instructions to manipulate the agent. That is why the merchant should be checked before paying and you should approve each purchase.
How do I check a shop before my agent pays?
Paste the shop address into desenmascara.me. If you use or build an MCP-compatible agent, it can call check_before_payment with the domain and receive do_not_pay, stop_and_ask_user or no_fraud_found.
What is the Agent Trust API?
A desenmascara.me API that an AI agent or a payment platform calls before paying a merchant. It returns BLOCK, REVIEW or NO_FRAUD_FOUND with the reasons, the report link and a hash of the evidence. It works over REST and as an MCP tool.
What is an AI agent trap?
Hidden text on a website, invisible to people, that gives orders to the assistant reading it: buy here, do not compare prices, do not ask for confirmation. We detect it in the page code, and for a shopping agent it means do not pay.
Published 13 October 2026. Spanish version