For years, the fight against cybercrime has been one of Amazon's main objectives. With more than 2.5 million sellers on this marketplace, many brands are faced with the sale of counterfeits, an illegal activity that is difficult to stop. With each measure developed against the sale of copies, pirates adapt to evade them and remain undetected.
In order to put an end to counterfeiting, Amazon announced in spring 2019 the launch of its Project Zero tool on its European platforms , a protection service currently in the testing phase.
Essentially, Project Zero allows brands to remove counterfeit ecuador whatsapp data products without the need for intermediaries , in a self-service manner. This greatly streamlines the process of protecting brands. José Ignacio Carrillo, Legal Manager at Smart Protection and a veteran in the fight against counterfeiting, says that Project Zero represents “an evolution of Amazon’s anti-piracy tools that will allow for controlling infringements in a more efficient and simple way.”
Amazon and the fight against piracy in recent years
Project Zero is not the first measure adopted by the e-commerce giant to combat cybercrime. In May 2017, Amazon already renewed its Brand Registry , a service to help identify and eliminate threats. This application was the first step by the American company to tackle the problem. Specifically, it allows you to register your brand on Amazon in order to manually request the removal of an infringing product or sale using a series of tools, once the relevant documentation has been provided.
In addition to allowing the removal of counterfeit products from the marketplace, it also allows for monitoring sales that rely on other brands to position products in the platform's search results. For example, just as some administrators of pirate sites pay for positioning by using the names of recognized trademarks in an unauthorized manner, some sneaker sellers use popular brands in the product description, fraudulently attracting users who are looking for products from that well-known brand.
On the other hand, the withdrawal of infringing sales does not occur immediately: the speed with which counterfeiters upload new products to the marketplace is usually greater than the time needed to withdraw the product.
In March 2017, Amazon launched Transparency , a system based on product identification using QR codes. To participate in this program, brands must purchase a series of labels that include detailed information about the origin of the product (date and place of manufacture, expiration date, brand owner, etc.). This label is applied to each product from the point of manufacture. In this way, Amazon can identify and market only those items from brands that include the Transparency code, regardless of who the seller is.
Amazon Project Zero combines the security of Brand Registry (requires the brand to be registered in the program) with the labeling option of Transparency, but its differential value goes much further.
Machine learning, el motor de Amazon Project Zero
Project Zero may not prove to be the ultimate tool against counterfeiting, but it does show Amazon's commitment to combating counterfeiting on its marketplace. To do so, Amazon has developed a series of algorithms aimed at detecting counterfeit products on Amazon's various portals in each country. The different technologies and algorithms automate this task by continuously scanning key data (such as registered names or logos) provided by the brands themselves. Currently, the system scans more than 5 billion product updates every day to detect potential irregularities.