Amazon.com Inc.

04/21/2026 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2026 22:17

Inside the AI systems Amazon uses to protect every part of your shopping experience

Key takeaways

  • Since 2020, Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 32,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement, across 14 countries.
  • Amazon's AI early warning system successfully anticipated a bad actor attack on a viral, new branded product, blocking the infringing listings a full eight days before the brand owner even shared their IP with us.
  • In 2025, Amazon's legal actions led to the shutdown of more than 100 websites attempting to facilitate fake reviews and scams targeting our store.
For the past five years, Amazon has published an annual Brand Protection Report-a detailed look at how we combat counterfeits, protect intellectual property, and safeguard the brands that sell in our store. But global retail has never been more connected-or more complex. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics, criminal networks operate across borders, and the threats facing retail extend well beyond counterfeits. At the same time, advancements in AI are giving us capabilities that didn't exist a few years ago-allowing us to move from proactive to predictive, analyzing billions of signals simultaneously and detecting threats before they ever reach customers.
That's why today we're releasing Amazon's Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report, providing a comprehensive look at how we're working to protect customers, selling partners, and brands across our global store. The report expands our commitment to trust and safety, continuing to cover brand protection and anti-counterfeiting, but now also encompassing organized retail crime, product safety, scam prevention, and trustworthy reviews.
Our goal is to protect the store for customers, brands, and sellers alike. But we understand policies designed to protect customers can sometimes create friction for sellers trying to grow their business. That's why we've invested in tools such as Amazon's Account Health Dashboard, which gives sellers transparency and control into their adherence to policies, performance targets, and more. Ensuring that legitimate selling partners can thrive on Amazon is central to our mission, and this report reflects that commitment.

How Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit takes action to stop counterfeiters

The Counterfeit Crimes Unit takes direct action against bad actors, either through civil lawsuits or criminal referrals to law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Our approach is built on four interconnected pillars: 1) proactive controls that stop issues before they reach customers, 2) powerful tools that anticipate risks, 3) holding bad actors accountable, and 4) protecting and educating consumers.
Below are a few highlights illustrating each pillar in action:

1. Stopping problems before they reach customers

We make it straightforward for legitimate businesses to set up a selling account, but bad actors attempting to misrepresent themselves encounter intentional friction at every step. All new sellers are required to complete Amazon's robust verification process before they are allowed to sell in Amazon's store. We then continuously monitor activity throughout a seller's journey, with our automated technology and artificial intelligence (AI) scanning billions of attempted changes to product detail pages daily for signs of potential abuse. Multimodal systems also analyze billions of signals simultaneously-including text, images, seller behavior, and supply chain patterns-to help identify potential abuse before it reaches customers.
We also launched our direct product validation program to allow us to work directly with accredited safety laboratories to verify the compliance of products in our store. We deployed Omniscan-an advanced machine learning system that verifies the readability and language of essential safety details at scale before products are listed-across our global fulfillment network in the U.S., Canada, UK, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Europe. The system generated image sets for more than 12 million products.
Omniscan is an advanced machine learning system that verifies the readability and language of essential safety details at scale before products are listed.
To protect the integrity of customer reviews, our systems analyze thousands of data points across billions of reviews before a review appears in the store, drawing on review data that dates back to 1995 to help detect fake or abusive content. In 2025, we proactively blocked hundreds of millions suspected fake reviews from our store.

2. Anticipating risks before they emerge

We developed an early warning system that can detect emerging threats to new brands and products before they reach our catalog. By integrating real-time signals from social media and other retailers, we can anticipate potential infringement in some cases even before brands share their new intellectual property (IP) with us. In 2025, our teams successfully anticipated a bad actor attack on a viral, new branded product trending on social media, blocking the infringing listings a full eight days before the brand owner even shared their IP with us.
This same anticipatory approach extends to scam prevention. Amazon also launched SENTRIX last year, an AI technology that enhances our ability to identify and remove malicious websites even faster.Through SENTRIX's automated detection capabilities, potential phishing websites are detected. These proactive controls have increased successful phishing URL takedowns by more than 10%.
In 2025, Amazon launched SENTRIX, an AI technology that enhances our ability to identify and remove malicious websites even faster.

3. Holding bad actors accountable

We pursue bad actors across multiple dimensions of illegal activity including global scam prevention, organized retail crime, cybercrime, counterfeit enforcement, and return and refund fraud. Since its launch in 2020, Amazon's Counterfeit Crimes Unit has pursued more than 32,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals to law enforcement, across 14 countries. In 2025, we identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of more than 15 million counterfeit products worldwide, while our legal actions led to the shutdown of more than 100 websites attempting to facilitate fake reviews and scams targeting the Amazon store. We are also a member of 10 organized retail crime task forces led by attorneys general across the United States.
We pursue bad actors across borders-last year, Amazon's collaboration with Chinese law enforcement and brands led to more than 70 successful local raid actions against manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors of counterfeit products. These actions resulted in criminal convictions including fines and prison sentences.

Amazon's latest actions to protect customers from impersonation scams

Stay up to date on the latest actions taken by Amazon to protect consumers.

4. Protecting and empowering consumers

In 2025, we directly contacted millions of customers with product safety information regarding the products they purchased, and partnered with 34 consumer organizations to deliver safety information on 71 key topics across seven countries. Our "Your Recalls and Product Safety Alerts" page ensures that when a government announces a recall, every affected customer receives a personalized notification linking directly to details about the hazard and their options for refunds, returns, or repairs. These efforts extend beyond Amazon's store through collaboration with government, safety organizations, and advocacy groups worldwide-ensuring every consumer has access to the knowledge and tools they need to shop confidently and safely.
Our "Your Recalls and Product Safety Alerts" page ensures that when a government announces a recall, every affected customer receives a personalized notification linking directly to details about the hazard and their options for refunds, returns, or repairs.
The systems described in this report are evolving every day, building upon decades of learnings, billions of data points, and a consistent flow of feedback. Creating the most trustworthy shopping experience in the world is a journey. This report is our most transparent account yet of the progress we've made, the challenges that remain, and the commitment that drives us forward.
Amazon.com Inc. published this content on April 21, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on April 22, 2026 at 04:17 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]