Amazon removed 60 lakh counterfeit products and 5,000 false brands in 2022

E-commerce behemoth Amazon has been cracking down on counterfeit items and bad actors on its platform in the last few years. It removed 6 million counterfeit items from global supply chains in 2022, preventing those from reaching customers and being resold elsewhere, per its latest ‘Brand Protection Report’. 

Additionally, Amazon also removed 5,000 false brands, and stopped over 800,000 bad attempts to open new seller accounts during the year, which is lower than the 2.5 million such attempts recorded in 2021. 

Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s VP of Worldwide Selling Partner Services, shared, “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. 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.”

During the year, Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit sued or referred for investigation over 1,300 criminals in the US, UK, EU, and China. The platform uses a mix of machine learning and AI detection tools to stop bad actors. Amazon has also ramped up its seller verification programme to intervene right at the outset in case of foul play. “While our store and number of products available for sale have continued to grow, the number of valid notices of infringement submitted by brands has significantly decreased,” Amazon said in a statement.

The Seattle-based tech giant has invested over $1.2 billion and employed more than 15,000 people—including machine learning scientists, software developers, and expert investigators— to protect its customers, brands, and selling partners from counterfeit, fraud, and other forms of abuse. Amazon’s automated technology scans over 8 billion listings daily and vets “attempted changes to product detail pages for signs of potential abuse”.

“In partnership with the US Chamber of Commerce and US Customs and Border Protection, we built marketing campaigns that helped educate consumers about how to shop safely and ensure they were purchasing authentic products while understanding the harm and dangers of purchasing counterfeits,” Mehta added.