Amazon forms new global partnerships to protect consumers at Global Fraud Summit in Vienna

Fraud is a rising threat for consumers worldwide, with seven in ten adults globally encountering a scam in 2025, according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance. Behind these scams are increasingly sophisticated transnational criminal networks that exploit trusted brands, financial systems, and digital infrastructure to deceive consumers. On March 16–17, Amazon joined governments, law enforcement, civil society, and industry partners from more than 120 countries at the United Nations Global Fraud Summit in Vienna, Austria, to tackle this growing challenge through international collaboration.

"No one should become a target of bad actors seeking to defraud them," said Katharine Lister, Amazon's Director of Worldwide Customer Trust, speaking at the summit's plenary session. "Fraud doesn't stop at borders, and neither should the response to it. The solution requires a whole-of-society approach, where governments, the private sector, and civil society must act together to close the gaps that criminal networks exploit.”

Photo by UNODC

Worldwide, governments are making fraud prevention a national priority. The United Kingdom recently launched its new Fraud Strategy, the United States issued an executive order to establish a task force to eliminate fraud, and the European Union sought industry input into its own new fraud strategy. We welcome these initiatives and look forward to working with the public sector to eliminate fraud and protect consumers across the globe.

As one of the summit’s sponsors, we became a founding signatory to multiple international frameworks launched at the event, including the UN Public-Private Partnership (PPP) principles and the Industry Accord Against Scams and Fraud.

The UN PPP provides a multilateral framework for collaboration between the public and private sectors working on fraud prevention within each member country and across borders. It also provides guidance for responsible data sharing between companies and governments, enabling faster identification of fraud networks while protecting consumer privacy.

The Industry Accord, a global initiative signed by Amazon, Adobe, Google, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, OpenAI, Target, and others, establishes shared commitments to help tackle the transnational criminal networks defrauding consumers.

"We believe an informed consumer is a protected consumer," Lister said at the accord's launch. "Criminal networks impersonate trusted brands through fake emails, phone calls, and text messages to deceive consumers. Public education is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight back."

The accord formalizes the business approach to sharing intelligence across industries and borders, deploying AI-powered protective tools, collaborating with law enforcement to disrupt transnational criminal networks, and educating consumers on how to identify and protect themselves from scams.

Amazon is already acting on these principles. In 2025, we initiated takedowns of more than 70,000 phishing websites and 14,000 phone numbers being used in impersonation schemes worldwide.

We welcome companies from across the world to join the Industry Accord to prevent scams wherever they occur.

How Amazon uses AI innovations to stop fraud and counterfeits

Our fifth annual report highlights the continued success of our strategy to drive counterfeits to zero.

Read more

The international frameworks we endorsed at the summit build on existing commitments, but there is more to be done.

We recommend that governments worldwide review and strengthen their fraud strategies. Criminal networks are evolving fast, and policy frameworks need to keep pace. We're calling on governments to focus on five areas:

1. Make fraud a national priority. Establish dedicated anti-fraud coordination bodies that bring together government, industry, and civil society.
2. Help consumers in the moment. Enable timely alerts at the points where consumers are most at risk.
3. Enable responsible data sharing. Update data protection rules so that companies and law enforcement can share fraud intelligence quickly and lawfully, with safeguards for good-faith cooperation.
4. Follow the money. Strengthen enforcement mechanisms that trace illicit funds back to criminal networks and stand up dedicated task forces with clear lines of responsibility.
5. Invest in victim support and prevention. Expand resources for victims of fraud, fund digital literacy programs, and deploy consumer education at scale.

Consumers need the right tools and information to stay ahead of scammers. Through amazon.com/ReportAScam, available in 28 languages, consumers can flag suspicious activity that we convert into actionable intelligence for law enforcement. We also regularly publish Scam Trends reports with partners across the U.S., UK, EU, and Japan to keep consumers informed of emerging threats.

Beyond prevention, we are also calling for strengthened support for those who have been targeted. Monica Ariño, Amazon's Director of UK Public Policy, opened the consumer-focused session at the summit, where experts discussed immediate response protocols, legal resources, financial recovery, and psychological support for fraud victims.

"Victims need more than financial recovery. They need reassurance, recognition, compassion, and they need justice," Arino said. "At Amazon, we're committed to closing the gap between what victims experience and the support they actually receive—from proactive scam prevention and consumer education to initiatives like the Scam Justice Legal Clinic, which provides pro bono legal support to fraud victims in the U.S."

The commitments made at the Global Fraud Summit represent an important step forward in building the international cooperation necessary to protect consumers and hold bad actors accountable across borders.

Amazon hosted expert table discussions throughout the summit, bringing together leaders from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, Consumers International, Stop Scams UK, American Association of Retired Persons, and the Aspen Institute.

"These conversations reinforced that consumer protection requires sustained partnership—sharing intelligence, coordinating enforcement, and building public awareness together," said Abigail Bishop, Amazon's Global Head of Scam Prevention.

Amazon looks forward to continuing our work with partners to protect consumers and welcomes the opportunity to engage with new partners to help develop and deliver global solutions to prevent fraud.