SEATTLE — Amazon said it is making it easier to tell the difference between real messages from the company and fake ones from scammers.
The new AI feature uses a database of billions of messages sent by Amazon’s team to verify whether an email, phone call, message, or text is from an official source.
“Scammers thrive when customers can’t easily verify whether a message is real,” said Scott Knapp, vice president of worldwide buyer risk prevention at Amazon. “That’s why we built a tool to put certainty directly in customers’ hands, in real time, when they need it most.”
Shoppers who want to verify the authenticity of a message start by asking Alexa for Shopping to verify the source of the communication, where it came from, when it arrived and what it said. The tool checks those details against Amazon’s record of every communication it has sent, analyzing sender information, content, timing, and formatting.
Shoppers get a response with seconds, Amazon said, letting them know whether the message came from Amazon or not, or whether the AI was unable to verify the authenticity, along with tips and next steps.
Every year, 360,000 customers contact Amazon customer service to ask whether an email purporting to be from Amazon is real or not, the company said.
The Alexa for Shopping communication verification tool adds to the list of ways customers can verify Amazon communications. Earlier this year, the company introduced verify@amazon.com — an email address available to anyone in the world, Amazon customer or not, where users can forward a suspicious message and receive a verification response confirming whether it’s genuinely from Amazon. No app or Amazon account required.
Customers can also use a dedicated verification form on Amazon’s customer service pages, which walks them through submitting communication details and provides an instant result. Together with Alexa for Shopping, these three options give customers multiple ways to confirm whether a message is genuine in whichever experience works best for them, the company said.
