SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon says it is winning the battle against the large number of counterfeit products on its platform and says it seized and disposed of more than 6 million fake products last year.

That's up from around 3 million counterfeit products stopped the year before, the world's largest online retailer said in a report published on Tuesday.

Amazon not only sells goods itself, but also acts as a platform for other traders, and product counterfeiters often try to use this route as a gateway.

The retail giant says its measures are also having a deterrent effect, and that the number of accounts created by people with "bad intentions" are decreasing.

In 2020, Amazon stopped 6 million attempts to set up accounts, in 2021 it was around 2.5 million and last year only 800,000. Amazon manager Dharmesh Mehta emphasised that further data showed that it was a matter of an actual decline in activity.

The company has also expanded its checks when someone sets up a merchant account. Also, Amazon says it automatically checks 8 billion changes to pages with product offers every day for signs of attempted misuse.

 - dpa