Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Other

Rajiv Chopra

Richendra Khanna

Weijiang Yu

Jesper Mikael Johansson

Peter Sven Vosshall

Terrance Douglas Hanold

David Hiroshi Hijirida

Jeffrey P Bezos

Douglas James Herrington

Scott Douglas White

Maria Christine Renz

Kiran Jyotsna Achyutuni

Scott M Silver

Joseph Sirosh

Hisham Al-Shurafa

Mark A Harburg

Sachin Chouksey

Sarah Ann Wood

Edward E Bardusch

Shehzad Mevawalla

David T Margrave

An unauthorized-product detection system may compare data representing various authentication markers of items presumed to have been produced or sourced by a particular entity with stored data representing valid authentication markers of items produced or sourced by the particular entity. The authentication markers may represent inherent physical characteristics of the items or their packaging, or may be generated and applied to the items or their packaging to facilitate counterfeit detection and/or for other purposes. The data (some of which may be encrypted) may be captured using high-resolution cameras, scanners, or other devices, and then communicated to the unauthorized-product detection system for analysis. The system may maintain a data store of data representing captured or valid authentication markers and may store tracking information reflecting the use of various authentication markers. The system may provide various unauthorized product detection services to consumers, retailers, or members of a supply-chain.

Unauthorized product detection techniques

Financial transactions, such as buying and selling, may be facilitated by merchant-based shadow account numbers. A master account may contain several associated shadow accounts. Each shadow account may in turn be associated with a specific merchant or group of merchants. Merchants and users may store and use the shadow account numbers rather than the master account numbers. Stolen or otherwise compromised shadow account numbers are useless with other non-associated merchants. Furthermore, the shadow numbers may be easily invalidated while leaving the master account untouched.

Merchant-specific shadow account numbers

Techniques are described for identifying the use of software applications, such as to determine an identity of a user interacting with a Web site or other electronic information service based on information regarding an application copy used by the user. When a communication is received from a software application, the communication is analyzed to attempt to identify a particular software application copy that sent the communication. Various types of information about a client software application copy may be used in the analysis, including information about particular configuration settings for the client software application and for the client computing device on which the client software application is executing. After a matching software application copy is identified for a received communication, possible inappropriate activities related to the received communication may be identified in various ways, including based on previous communications received from the same software application copy.

Identifying use of software applications

Techniques are described for use in selectively authorizing proposed transactions under certain circumstances, such as when payments for the transactions are not assured. In some situations, when payments to a merchant from customers are not assured for proposed item acquisition transactions involving those customers, determinations are made to authorize and proceed with at least some of those proposed transactions in an automatic and selective manner without the assurance of receiving the payments for the selected transactions. For example, a selective determination of whether to authorize a proposed transaction may be made based on analyzing information about the proposed transaction (e.g., about the item(s) involved in the transaction, a payment amount of the transaction, the customer(s) involved in the transactions, etc.) and on information regarding other prior transactions. If a proposed transaction is authorized, the merchant may then proceed to initiate fulfillment of the transaction before the merchant receives payment.

Selective authorization of item transactions

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Rajiv Chopra