Alexa for Shopping checks whether a message really came from Amazon
Amazon has given Alexa for Shopping the job of answering whether an email, text message or call really came from the company. The assistant compares it with the billions of messages Amazon has sent globally, weighs the sender, wording, formatting and timing, and confirms only when it is certain. About 360,000 customers a year had been carrying that question to human support instead.
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The assistant compares the message with what Amazon has actually sent
Amazon says Alexa for Shopping takes a suspect email, text message or phone call, checks it against the billions of messages the company has sent globally, and then also weighs the sender information, content, formatting, timing and message metadata before answering. In the company's account the assistant confirms a message only when it is certain that the message came from its own systems. In the example Amazon published, a customer asks whether a one-time password sent from 98626 belongs to the company, and the assistant confirms that it does. Amazon says the check sharpens as customers report more suspicious messages. Alexa for Shopping is reachable from the Amazon website and the mobile app.[1], [2]
Every year 360,000 customers carried the same question to support
Amazon puts the size of the problem at about 360,000 customers a year who contact customer service to ask whether a message said to come from the company is genuine. The scams the feature is aimed at include fake order confirmations, Prime membership renewal alerts, account suspension warnings, package delivery notifications and job offers. When the check comes back negative the assistant stops short of declaring fraud; it tells the customer to open their orders in the app and to contact support directly. The company describes the positive answer as definitive: when a message did come from its own systems, the assistant says so plainly.[2], [1]
After the verification address, the assistant moved further into shopping
The feature sits on top of Amazon's earlier anti-scam work: earlier this year the company opened the address verify@amazon.com, where anyone can forward a suspect email and receive a reply saying whether it was genuine, and an online form on its customer service pages does the same. The same line of work continues Alexa's shift toward shopping. The assistant already finds personalised deals, builds shopping guides, reorders everyday items, writes product overviews and transcribes handwritten shopping lists. Amazon had recently added product-release tracking to the same assistant, and on Tuesday it opened alerts that tell a customer when a favourite brand ships something new or an author publishes a new book.[1], [2]
