Amazon’s fight against counterfeiting: 15 million fake products blocked in 2025

Amazon has published its Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report, the annual document in which the marketplace reports on its activities to combat fraud, counterfeiting, fake reviews and all kinds of abuse.

The 2025 figures are telling:

• over 15 million counterfeit products identified, seized and disposed of
• more than 100 websites promoting fake reviews shut down
• over 32,000 bad actors prosecuted in 14 countries since 2020.

This is an operation on an enormous scale. A complex effort involving artificial intelligence systems, accredited verification laboratories, dedicated investigative units and collaboration with authorities around the world.

But what are the implications of all this for honest sellers operating on the marketplace? Let’s try to summarise them!

What is the Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report

The report is the tool Amazon uses to document its approach to marketplace protection. Although counterfeiting is the focus of this article, the dossier is not limited to it alone. It also includes data and initiatives on

• product safety
• customer scam prevention
• review integrity
• combating organised crime in retail.

Amazon’s stated approach rests on four pillars:

• proactive controls to block problems before they reach the customer
• advanced risk-prevention tools
• legal action against bad actors
• consumer information and protection programmes.

How Amazon checks who opens a seller account

The first point of intervention is the opening of a seller account itself. Amazon has implemented a mandatory verification process for all new selling partners, designed to prevent bad actors from falsifying their identity during registration.

Account activity is monitored continuously through automated technologies and artificial intelligence systems that analyse billions of product page changes. The monitored parameters include

• text
• images
• account behaviour
• supply chain patterns.

Omniscan and the verification of product safety information

One of the most interesting tools described in the report is Omniscan, an advanced machine learning system developed by Amazon to verify the readability and linguistic accuracy of product safety information before publication.

Omniscan is active in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Europe, and in 2025 it generated image sets for over 12 million products. In practice, the system scans product listings to ensure that safety information is present, understandable and compliant with the regulatory standards of the relevant market.

For sellers, the practical implications are significant. Having incomplete product listings, with missing or poorly translated safety information, is both a compliance risk and a factor that can affect visibility and the ability to sell in certain markets. It is therefore worth investing time and resources in the quality of the technical and safety information for your products.

The early warning system for counterfeiting

One of the most relevant aspects of the report concerns an early warning system developed by Amazon to identify threats to new brands and products before they even enter the official catalogue.

The system analyses real-time signals from social media and other online retailers, with the aim of identifying counterfeit listings of viral products as soon as they are created — and therefore even before the legitimate brand owner becomes aware of the problem. In 2025, Amazon managed to block counterfeit listings of new products up to eight days before the legitimate brand contacted the store to request action.

This represents a significant shift from the past, when the fight against counterfeiting was largely reactive. That is, the brand would discover the problem, report it to Amazon, and only then would the removal process begin. A proactive approach that acts in advance instead potentially reduces the damage to honest brands, both in terms of lost sales and compromised reputation.

Sentrix: AI against malicious websites

Amazon has launched Sentrix, an artificial intelligence-based technology dedicated to identifying and removing websites that operate maliciously. For example, these may be sites that impersonate Amazon or brands sold on the platform in order to

• defraud consumers
• promote fake reviews
• carry out phishing activities.

In 2025, also thanks to Sentrix, over 100 websites linked to fake reviews and scams were shut down. This activity complements the work of the CCU (Counterfeit Crimes Unit), Amazon’s internal investigative unit, which since 2020 has initiated legal proceedings against over 32,000 individuals in 14 countries.

The Account Health Dashboard: transparency for sellers

The report mentions the Account Health Dashboard as a central tool in the relationship between Amazon and its selling partners. Amazon acknowledges that some of its policies designed to protect customers can create operational difficulties for sellers, and presents the dashboard as a tool to offer greater transparency and control.

The Account Health Dashboard allows sellers to

• monitor their compliance status against Amazon’s policies in real time
• identify potential issues before they worsen and take prompt action to resolve them.

It is therefore a tool that all sellers should consult regularly, not just when they receive a problem notification.

Understanding your account health score, monitoring key metrics such as the order defect rate, cancellation rate and late shipment rate, and proactively acting on negative signals is the best strategy to avoid suspensions or restrictions that can seriously impact your business.

Review integrity

On the reviews front, Amazon describes in the report a system that analyses thousands of signals relating to billions of reviews before publication, drawing on historical data going back to 1995 to identify patterns of fake or unlawful content.

For sellers, this has two main implications.

The first is positive. A robust system to combat fake reviews reduces the unfair advantage of those who seek to artificially manipulate their products’ ratings or damage competitors’ reputations.

The second is more nuanced. The same system can sometimes remove legitimate reviews that display characteristics deemed suspicious by the algorithm. For instance, because they arrived in a concentrated way following a product launch or a promotional campaign.

This is why building an organic flow of reviews over time, through a quality product and good after-sales service, remains the most solid strategy and least exposed to the risks associated with automated moderation policies.

What to do to protect your business

Reading the Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report from the right perspective means recognising that Amazon is increasingly investing in making the marketplace safer and more transparent. Of course, the process also brings new complexities for honest sellers. Here are some practical actions to consider:

1. Register your brand on Amazon Brand Registry, if you haven’t done so yet. It is the prerequisite for accessing proactive protection tools. And, above all, for effectively reporting any violations of your intellectual property.
2. Take care of the quality of safety information on your listings. Do this especially if you sell in European markets or in countries with specific regulations on product safety requirements. Systems like Omniscan penalise incomplete or non-compliant listings.
3. Monitor the Account Health Dashboard regularly. Act promptly on any negative signal before it turns into a restriction or suspension.
4. Build your reviews organically and sustainably. Avoid tactics that could be interpreted as manipulation even when they are not.
5. Document the legitimacy of your supply chain, especially if you operate in categories with a high risk of counterfeiting. Having clear documentation of your products’ origin is essential. It will help you both prevent problems and resolve them quickly in the event of disputes.

ZonWizard: monitor your account health and performance in one place

In a marketplace where automated systems can have an immediate impact on visibility and sales, having a clear, real-time view of your situation is essential. ZonWizard allows you to keep track of your account’s performance, analyse real margins, monitor ranking changes and manage PPC campaigns with precise and up-to-date data.

👉 Try ZonWizard for free HERE and manage your Amazon business with the effectiveness it deserves!