Amazon says it seized 2m fake products last year

Often accused of not doing enough to tackle the issue of counterfeit goods on its platform, Amazon has hit back in a report on its brand protection activities in 2020.

The online retail giant says it blocked 10bn listings it suspected of peddling fake goods, before they could be put on sale, and seized and destroyed more than 2m products at its fulfilment centres before they were delivered to consumers.

Amazon also says that only 6 per cent of attempted seller account registrations were able to pass its verification processes and listed products for sale, and it prevented over 6 million attempts to create accounts by known bad actors.

The brand protection report comes as Amazon's record on counterfeits remains under scrutiny. A federal court in California ruled recently that the company should be prohibited from selling or posting reportedly counterfeit Suncoo-branded disposable facemasks on its website, after hearing that it relisted its own supply of the suspect items three times after agreeing to stop.

Some of Amazon's overseas sites are also included in the latest edition of the US Trade Representative's list of notorious markets for counterfeiting and privacy, which at the moment doesn't include domestic US marketplaces.

Lawmakers are also taking aim at Amazon and other online retail platforms like eBay, Wish and Etsy, pushing legislation that could force them to take tougher action on the issue, and specifically on the activities of third-party sellers on their marketplaces.

Among the measures tabled are a requirement to authenticate the identity of high-volume sellers, and collect information like government and tax IDs, bank account information and contact details – which Amazon has pushed back against.

The report comes after Amazon introduced a series of measures to try to reduce the number of listings for counterfeit goods on its websites, including Project Zero, which deploys a machine learning algorithm that can scans listings for suspected counterfeits and automatically takes them down – and a product serialization service called Transparency that allows products from participating companies to be scanned and verified before shipping.

It has also set up its counterfeit crimes unit, a team of former federal prosecutors, investigators and data analysts tasked with supporting law enforcement investigations and to initiate civil litigation against counterfeiters.

Amazon says in its report that it has invested $700m in its anti-counterfeit platform – a fraction of the $386bn it recorded in revenues last year – and employs more than 10,000 people to protect its platform from fraud and abuse.