Six of the fraudulent sites have been referred to law enforcement, Sing Tao Headline reported on Aug. 5.

Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung Lai-ling told Commercial Radio the same morning that scammers are using AI to build the fake portals, making them substantially harder to distinguish from official ones.

Chung said e-visa applications involve large volumes of sensitive personal data belonging to applicants and their relatives, and that search platforms bear a responsibility to take fraudulent sites down.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said on Aug. 4 that complainants had been searching for destination visa, electronic travel authorization or arrival card application pages and clicked through from search results, Ming Pao reported.

They submitted names, gender, nationality, passport numbers and dates of birth, then paid application fees and surcharges before realizing the site was probably fake.

Losses in individual cases started at more than HK$300 ($38), according to RTHK.

Fraudulent addresses often closely resemble official ones but contain spelling errors, extra letters or extra digits, the office said.

Chung advised applicants to check that a full URL contains "gov." rather than the ".com" or ".org" formats used by ordinary organizations.

She said the top result in a search listing is not necessarily an official channel, and told travelers to reach e-visa platforms through links published by the relevant countries and territories' consulates general or representative offices in Hong Kong. She also urged them to treat any unexpected call, email or message requesting further information with caution.

Comparison images the office released show fake versions of the official portals for Canada, Thailand and the U.K., Ming Pao reported.

The South China Morning Post reported that Spain and the U.S. were also impersonated.