Amazon is striving to build a world where consumers don’t fall prey to bad actors who impersonate their brand or anyone else’s. The global e-commerce giant knows that scammers use sophisticated techniques and social engineering to exploit consumer trust.
According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance’s Global State of Scams Report, consumers lost over $1 trillion globally in 2023. The Singapore Police Force stated in its Annual Scams and Cybercrime Brief 2023 that the number of scam and cybercrime cases increased by 49.6 percent to 50,376 in 2023, compared to 33,669 in 2022.
To stamp out cybercrime, the Singapore government established the E-commerce Marketplace Transaction Safety Ratings (TSR). Amazon.sg achieved the highest rating possible for a second consecutive year in 2023 in TSR. Similar efforts are being taken in other countries like Japan, South Africa, and Italy.
Trending Scams Reported to Amazon
Scott Knapp, Director of Worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention at Amazon, said impersonation scams is trending. It happens when a scammer pretends to be a trusted brand and tries to get payment or sensitive information like social security numbers, bank information, or Amazon account details. Knapp explained that order issue scams are unsolicited phone calls, text messages, or emails containing details about a purchase the customer never made, asking to confirm or deny the purchase and providing account information to the scammer.
He said the top three tactics scammers use on Amazon customers from February to May 2024 were phone calls, emails regarding the customer’s Prime membership in which a fake invoice is provided to the customer, and emails stating that the customer’s Prime membership has expired. Knapp highlighted that Amazon is diligently working to help educate consumers to avoid scams, and scammers are held accountable.
Amazon has been building innovative technologies that shield accounts and detect fraudulent attempts, creating educational initiatives to help consumers know it’s really the company, and partnering with law enforcement to hold bad actors to account. Knapp said the more consumers report scams to Amazon, the better their tools get at identifying bad actors.
The e-commerce company has teams of machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators around the world dedicated to protecting consumers from scams. Amazon says scams happen outside their store and outside their protected communication channels.
Extra Security Steps for Amazon Prime Day
Amazon urges customers to be extra vigilant of potential scams during busy online shopping seasons like Prime Day. Knapp highlighted that most reported impersonation scams during Prime Day 2023 were email attachments with phishing links. Amazon noted the case increase from 5,000 per week to 14,000 per week from July 9-29, 2023 in the United States.
Customers also reported an increase in suspicious emails claiming Prime membership had expired or incorrect billing information. They recorded unexpected emails, calls and texts about allegedly costly membership fee or an issue with the customer’s membership. Amazon says stopping scams at the source requires accurate and up-to-date information about scammers’ latest schemes and target victims. The e-commerce giant is innovating to find opportunities to integrate scam prevention into its customer experience through alerts, notifications, and other reminders.
Amazon Invested $1.2 bn to Tackle Fraud
In 2023, Amazon invested more than $1.2 billion to protect its brand and sellers, and customers from fraud and counterfeiting. It stopped more than 700,000 bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts, stopping them before they were able to list a single product for sale on Amazon. The company identified, seized, and disposed of more than 7 million counterfeit products worldwide in 2023, preventing them from harming customers or being resold elsewhere in the retail supply chain.
Amazon’s automated technology scans billions of attempted changes to product detail pages daily for signs of potential abuse, including the creation of new listings and changes to existing listings. Its tools use advanced machine learning to prevent the attempted listing of counterfeit or infringing products, such as scanning keywords, text, and logos which are identical or similar to registered trademarks or copyrighted work.
Amazon also uses data and learning to innovate and improve its proactive protections.
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