Amazon Adds Alexa Scam Protection as Consumer Fraud Losses Rise

Amazon announced Wednesday (Sept. 2) that it is giving consumers a new way to fight back against one of scammers’ most effective weapons, impersonation. The company is adding a feature to Alexa for Shopping that can verify whether an email, text, phone call or other message actually came from Amazon.

Starting in the U.S., this feature could offer a new line of defense against scams that exploit consumers’ trust in familiar brands and create pressure to act quickly. Amazon says about 360,000 customers contact its customer service teams each year asking whether a message is genuinely from the company. The new tool lets customers ask Alexa instead, with the system checking the communication against Amazon’s records of messages sent by its teams worldwide.

“We built a tool to put certainty directly in customers’ hands, in real time, when they need it most,” Scott Knapp, Amazon’s vice president of worldwide buyer risk prevention, said in the release. “It’s part of our broader commitment to educate and empower customers and protect them against scams.”

The system returns one of three answers: the communication is confirmed as official, it does not appear to be from Amazon, or Amazon cannot verify it. The latter is important. Rather than treating uncertainty as proof of fraud, the tool directs customers toward additional verification and safety steps.

Amazon also says every submitted communication is automatically reported to its customer protection and enforcement teams. That creates a second potential benefit: Each consumer inquiry can provide intelligence about emerging scam tactics and help the company identify and disrupt scammers.

The move comes as fraud ramps up. U.S. consumers reported $15.9 billion in fraud losses to the Federal Trade Commission in 2025, up from $12 billion in 2024. Imposter scams were the most commonly reported category, while text messages were the most common contact method.

The Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle W. Bowman said in May that fraud has become a priority for the Fed, noting that 21% of U.S. adults experienced financial fraud or scams in 2024 and that consumers lost $63 billion to non-credit card fraud. She warned that when consumers lose money at that scale, “that trust erodes”—putting greater pressure on banks, payment companies and technology providers to intervene before fraudulent transactions occur.

Research also shows that scammers are becoming more targeted. PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that younger consumers are particularly exposed to digitally initiated scams, while fraudsters tailor their approaches to consumers’ circumstances, interests and habits. Nearly two-thirds of scam victims make a payment within 24 hours of initial contact, highlighting the need for fast, straightforward verification tools.

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