Amazon launches AI tool to help customers spot fake messages

SALT LAKE CITY — A warning that your Amazon account has been hacked can demand quick action. The trouble is, scammers know that, too.

Fake warnings can look a whole lot like the real thing. Now, Amazon is launching a new tool to help customers tell the difference.

Sometimes bad guys really do get into our accounts. It happened to Renee Stevens.

"We got hacked by someone about a month or so ago on our Amazon account," she told Get Gephardt in June.

Using her account, the crook ordered a $2,000 laptop and had it shipped to Texas. The crook used someone else's presumably stolen credit card to make the purchase.

Stevens learned about the fraud when she got an alert from Amazon telling her to change her passwords.

That alert was bona fide. But, as you know, many are not.

Delivery problem. Suspicious purchase. Account verification.

Fake warnings are everywhere, said Amazon's head of scam prevention, Abigail Bishop.

"Last year, over 360,000 customers asked Amazon's customer service, 'Is this really Amazon contacting me?'" Bishop said.

So Amazon is now trying something new: letting customers ask its AI shopping assistant that question directly.

"Within moments, we will be able to tell you definitively, yes, this is from Amazon, or it's not from Amazon," Bishop said.

Tell it about a text or email you get, and the AI checks those details against Amazon's internal record of communications it actually sent.

This works for phone calls, too.

Even if a scammer spoofs Amazon's number so it looks like it is really the company calling on your caller ID, you can log on and ask the bot. It would be able to see that nobody from Amazon actually placed that call.

"It's not just the number. It's the information that is associated with that experience," Bishop said.

Amazon said there are still some dead giveaways that a communication is from a fraudster.

The company said it will never ask customers to pay for things over the phone, pay with a gift card or download software.

Customers looking to confirm that an Amazon communication is bona fide can log in to their Amazon account and click on "Alexa for shopping."

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