Today, Amazon released its third annual Brand Protection Report, showcasing how the company’s efforts to protect customers, brand, and partners from counterfeit products have progressed. This has resulted in more criminal referrals and industry partnerships than ever before.
This report also demonstrates how the strategic combination of industry-leading technology and experts are successfully stopping scammers and making an impact well beyond Amazon’s store. With identifying, seizing, and appropriately disposing of over six million counterfeit products in 2022, Amazon has prevented fraudulent sellers from reaching customers and selling their products elsewhere.
“We take pride in the progress our organization has made this past year, specifically further evolving our technology to stay ahead of bad actors and doubling down on our criminal referral and litigation efforts,” Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s Vice President of Worldwide Selling Partner Services, said. “We’re appreciative of the growing industry-wide collaboration in this space, and look forward to continuing to innovate and work together to drive counterfeits to zero.”
The Brand Protection report highlights Amazon’s progress in four key areas:
Increasingly Deterring Bad Actors: Amazon’s seller verification, including connecting one-on-one with prospective sellers through video chat, is successfully deterring bad actors from even attempting to create new Amazon accounts for selling.
In 2022, nearly 800,000 attempts to create new selling accounts were stopped, down from 2.5 million attempts in 2022 and 6 million in 2020.
Expanded Adoption of Brand Protection Tools: Amazon has also continued to improve their automated protection technologies, helping to leverage their partnership with brands and the data they provide. This reduces the need for brands to find and report infringements.
Holding Counterfeiters Accountable and Stopping Them From Abusing Amazon and Others: In 2022, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit sued or referred investigation over 1,300 criminals in the U.S., UK, EU, and China, making a positive impact in the world of fraudulent selling. Amazon continues to partner with brands and law enforcement to not only stop these scammers, but also to be more receptive to counterfeit signals and completely wipe counterfeit items from the market, where they can’t be sold anywhere in the supply chain.
Strengthening Consumer Education: Amazon has also been working to build marketing campaigns to help educate consumers about how to shop safely and ensure they are purchasing authentic products. These campaigns have reached nearly 70 million people in the U.S.
View Amazon’s full Brand Protection report here.