Safe shopping on Amazon.sg: Here’s what you need to know

In May 2023, Amazon.sg achieved the highest rating possible for a second year running in Singapore’s E-Commerce Marketplace Transaction Safety Ratings, an annual evaluation by the Ministry of Home Affairs of the quality of anti-scam measures offered by online retailers operating in Singapore.

The ratings reflect Amazon’s commitment to protecting consumers by helping them avoid impersonation scams as well as other attempts by bad actors to defraud them. Impersonation scams happen when a scammer pretends to be a trusted company and reaches out to try to get access to sensitive information like social security numbers, bank information, or Amazon account details.

In 2022, we found that fake order confirmations accounted for more than 50% of the Amazon impersonation scams reported by our customers globally. These unsolicited communications often refer to a purchase (that customers didn’t make) and ask customers to act urgently to confirm the purchase. When consumers try to cancel the fake order by clicking a link or calling the supposed “customer service” number, scammers then try to steal their personal or financial information.

We invest significant resources to protect consumers and stores from these scammers, and remind people to be wary of false urgency.

“Scammers who attempt to impersonate Amazon put consumers at risk,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Services. “Although these scams take place outside our store, we will continue to invest in protecting consumers and educating the public on how to avoid scams.”

We’re helping consumers avoid scams through actions in three key areas:

First, we want our customers to know when they are communicating with Amazon that it is really us. Last year, we implemented industry-leading email verification technology across more than 20 countries, including Singapore, to make it easier for consumers to identify phishing emails and harder for scammers to commit fraud. Customers using Gmail, Yahoo!, and other common email providers can be confident an email is coming from Amazon because they will see the Amazon smile logo icon in their inbox. We also provide resources on how to tell whether an email, phone call, text message, or webpage is really from Amazon. And in 2022, we registered with the Singapore SMS Sender ID Registry so that our customers can be certain that text messages they receive from Amazon are genuine.

Second, we have zero tolerance for criminals who pretend to be Amazon to commit fraud and continue to work to hold bad actors accountable. In 2022, Amazon initiated takedowns of more than 20,000 phishing websites and 10,000 phone numbers being used for impersonation scams. We also have referred hundreds of bad actors across the globe to local law enforcement authorities, and we will continue to support their efforts in ensuring these scammers are held accountable.

Third, we work to help educate consumers on how to avoid scams. While bad actors will continue to try to evade detection, there are helpful tips that we are sharing with our customers to avoid impersonation scams.

1. Verify purchases on Amazon. If you receive a message about the purchase of a product or service, do not respond to the message or click on any link in the message; instead, log into your Amazon account or use the Amazon mobile app and confirm that it is really in your purchase history before taking any action.

2. Trust Amazon’s app and website. We will not ask for payment over the phone or email—only in our mobile app, on our website, or in one of our physical stores. We will not call and ask you to make a payment or bank transfer on another website.

3. Be wary of false urgency. Scammers often try to create a sense of urgency to persuade you to do what they’re asking.

4. Don’t be pressured into buying a gift card. We will never ask you to purchase a gift card, and no legitimate sale or transaction will require you to pay with gift cards. Learn more about common gift card scams on our help pages.

5. Contact us. If you’re ever unsure, it’s safest to stop engaging with the potential scammer and contact us directly through the Amazon app or website. Do not call numbers sent over text or email, or found in online search results. Remember Amazon will not ask you to download or install any software to connect with customer service nor will we request payment for any customer service support.

If you receive correspondence that you think may not be from Amazon, please report it to us. Customers can use the Amazon self-service tool to report something suspicious in just a few quick steps. If you are not a customer, you can still report a suspicious message to us at stop-spoofing@amazon.com. These reports give us information to identify bad actors and take action against them, helping us stop scams before they happen.

We work hard to deter bad actors from even attempting to create new selling accounts in our store. Thanks to our robust seller verification, including connecting one-on-one with prospective sellers through video chat, coupled with continued advancements in our machine learning-based detection, the number of bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts decreased from 6 million attempts in 202f0 to 2.5 million attempts in 2021, to 800,000 in 2022 globally.

We also stand behind every product in our store, whether it is sold by Amazon or an independent small business, where we ensure that customers are covered with the A-to-Z Guarantee. This protection applies to products purchased in our stores worldwide. In the unlikely event that customers experience issues with timely delivery or condition of their purchase, we will make it right by refunding or replacing it.