Amazon requires new sellers to complete "live verification" to deter bad actors from selling on its marketplace - that means Amazon employees interview prospective sellers either in person or via video chat.
That's according to information it provided in a lawsuit it filed with the brand Therabody last week against sellers whom they allege sold counterfeit Therabody products on Amazon.
The following excerpt from a section of the lawsuit describes the video verification process:
"Amazon continues to innovate to stay ahead of bad actors, and now requires live verification, connecting prospective selling partners with Amazon employees through video chats or in-person appointments to verify their identity and documentation.
"Amazon reviews the seller-provided identity documents to determine whether those documents are both valid and legitimate, such as confirming that the seller has provided a fully legible copy of the document, verifying that the document matches the information the seller provided to Amazon with respect to their identity, and analyzing whether the document shows any signs of alteration, tampering, or fabrication.
"These measures have made it more difficult for bad actors to hide."
Four years ago, we wrote about Amazon taking videos of sellers' faces in, "
Amazon Videotapes Seller Faces - Creepy or Justified?" At the time, some sellers were concerned about privacy issues given concerns over facial recognition technology, while others thought it was a good move to crack down on bad sellers.
Amazon indicated its efforts are working, stating in last week's lawsuit:
"Amazon's seller verification, coupled with continued advancements in Amazon's machine learning-based detection, are deterring bad actors from even attempting to create new Amazon selling accounts. The number of bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts decreased from 6 million attempts in 2020, to 2.5 million attempts in 2021, to 800,000 attempts in 2022."
What issues concern you about seller verification on sites like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy? We know
some sellers are uncomfortable with demands to upload "Personal Identifiable Information" (PII) such as driver's license, passport, social security number bank statements, and utility bills. But what about photos and videos that may or may not use facial recognition technology?
Is the price of giving over your image worth the benefit of deterring bad actors from selling on those sites?
Seeing Is Believing? Amazon Verifies Sellers by Video Chat
by: toolguy 
by: COVID-19 
by: The End