Wireless Wednesday Live: Scott Knapp, Director, Worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention, Amazon

Holiday online shopping tips with Scott Knapp of Amazon.

Rick talks with Scott Knapp, Director, Worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention, Amazon

Suggested Questions:

What are your top tips for safe holiday shopping?

What are some of the most common impersonation scams at the moment, and how do consumers identify them?

What is Amazon doing to protect consumers from counterfeits?

What is Amazon doing to ensure trustworthy reviews?

What should you do if you suspect an impersonation scam, counterfeit product, or fake review?

Helpful Tips to Shop Safely

With holiday shopping underway, there’s an increased risk in consumers being impacted by fraud. Amazon remains committed to protecting holiday shoppers from all forms of fraud, including impersonation scams, counterfeit products, and fake reviews, as customers shop for friends, family, and seasonal essentials.

During the winter holidays, 36% of Americans have fallen victim to online shopping scams, with one in three admitting to taking more risks this time of year, according to the 2022 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report.

While impersonation scams—where a bad actor pretends to be a trusted company to request sensitive information—take place outside of Amazon’s store, Amazon helps protect consumers by educating, innovating, and holding bad actors accountable. Fake messages about suspicious activity on customers’ Amazon accounts have been the top impersonation scam tactic reported to Amazon in 2023 so far.

Amazon has zero tolerance for fraud of any kind and consistently monitors to prevent counterfeit products from being listed. In 2022, the company scanned more than 8 billion attempted changes to product detail pages daily for signs of potential abuse and proactively blocked over 200 million suspected fake reviews from its store.

Scott Knapp is the Director of Worldwide Buyer Risk Prevention at Amazon, ensuring the store remains trustworthy by protecting customers and Amazon from fraud and abuse. Since joining Amazon in 2014, Scott has held various leadership roles in the risk space including: Risk Evaluation Process Reengineering, Risk Operations Support, and Payment Risk. In his current role, Scott leads thousands of investigators, machine learning scientists, product and program leads, software development engineers, and analysts, to keep customers, selling partners, and Amazon safe. This includes preventing payment related fraud and abuse, protecting Amazon account integrity, stopping impersonation scams, keeping selling partners safe from abuse, and holding bad actors accountable. Scott is a proud Hokie, having received his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech, and has had the chance to live across the U.S. and abroad. He currently lives in San Diego with his beautiful wife, teenage son, and two crazy dogs.