Amazon is now safer to shop in than it was last year.
The e-commerce giant recently announced in its annual brand protection report that its efforts to keep counterfeit products off its platform are paying off, per CNET.
The company is reportedly increasing its efforts to either destroy counterfeit items or remove those that sell them on its platform since 2020, per Ars Technica and Fortune.
Amazon's Anti-Counterfeit Item And Seller Measures Details
Amazon said in its latest brand protection report that its brand protection investments in 2021 are showing signs of progress. This progress is evidenced by the e-commerce giant stopping 4 billion listings selling fake products, destroying over 3 million counterfeit items, and stopping over 2.5 million attempts to create new selling accounts in 2021.
The blocking has prevented "bad actors" or those who wish to sell fake products from publishing even a single product for sale.
These measures were made possible through Amazon's investment increase, which was increased from $700 million to $900 million, to keep counterfeit products and their would-be sellers away from its platform.
The e-commerce giant also hired over 12,000 people to focus on the platform's counterfeit item sale problem, which was also an increase from its previous number of 10,000 in 2020. This increase may have to do with the company employing AI scientists to improve the company's automated systems to make them quickly identify fradulent products and shady sellers.
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Despite the lower investment, Amazon had blocked 10 million suspected bad listings in 2020 before they were published in its online store and destroyed 2 million counterfeit products in the same year.
Amazon also reported that its automated system stopped more than 6 million attempts of bad actors trying to set up shop in its platform in 2020.
Additionally, the company has sued or referred over 600 sellers that are supposedly selling fake goods to the proper autorities in 2021, which is a 300% increase from what it once was in 2020. To better prosecute alleged fake item sellers, Amazon partnered with brands such as Yeti, GoPro, Hanesbrands, Valentino, Wber, Salvatore Ferragamo, Whirlpool, and Prcter & Gamble to pursue counterfeiters globally.
This part of Amazon's anti-counterfeiter measure is evidenced by its refererral of a bad actor to Chinese authorities, resulting in a raid containing counterfeit luxury goods following Salvatore Ferragomo and Amazon sharing information to them, per a separate CNET report.
Amazon's Problem With Counterfeiting
Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of technology at Amazon, said the the increase in financial investment and employees is necessary as the problem regarding counterfeit items and those that sell them is not going away, adding that "it's an industry-wide" problem."
Amazon problems with counterfeiters and their items have increased since 2017, when it created its Brand Registry, a program that provides a suite of tools to help build and protect legitimate sellers' brands.
The e-commerce giant is also no stranger to being a target of criticism, with it facing denunciation from consumer protection advocates and business groups for exposing shoppers to potentially dangerous coutnerfeit products to both customer and businesses.
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