Amazon

Is the Amazon app safe?

As a place to store a card and an address, Amazon is one of the safer shopping apps: we found no large breach of customer accounts, and two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary is easy to switch on. The catch is Amazon's appetite for data and a run of US orders against it. In September 2025 it agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC charges over Prime sign-ups and cancellations, the largest item in a record that also includes Alexa and Ring. We score it 53/100, well above Shein and Temu.

How much Amazon knows about you

Amazon Shopping is published by AMZN Mobile LLC. Unlike some shopping apps, its Apple privacy label has no "Data Used to Track You" section, but it does list user ID and advertising data used for third-party advertising. The data linked to your identity is long: purchases, payment info, precise and coarse location, contacts, search history, photos, audio, health data and "sensitive info", spread across purposes such as product personalisation, analytics and Amazon's own marketing.

Amazon's other products add to the picture. In May 2023 the FTC and the Justice Department said Amazon had kept children's Alexa voice recordings for years, used them to improve its algorithms and undermined parents' requests to delete them. Amazon paid a $25 million civil penalty and agreed to change its deletion practices.

In Europe the record is mixed. Luxembourg's data regulator fined Amazon €746 million in 2021 for targeting ads without valid consent, the largest GDPRGDPRThe EU's General Data Protection Regulation, which sets rules on how organisations collect and use personal data and allows large fines.More in the glossary fine of its time. A Luxembourg court annulled that decision on 12 March 2026 and sent it back to the regulator. In France, CNIL fined Amazon France Logistique €32 million in December 2023 over what it called excessively intrusive monitoring of warehouse staff; the Conseil d'État upheld the finding but cut the fine to €15 million.

Prime and other design tricks

The FTC sued Amazon in 2023, alleging it used confusing screens to enrol people in Prime without their knowledge and a deliberately complex process to stop them cancelling. Amazon settled in September 2025: a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds to an estimated 35 million customers. It must now offer a clear button to decline Prime and can no longer label that button "No, I don't want Free Shipping".

Ring and account security

The weakest security record in the Amazon family belongs to Ring, not the shopping app. The FTC said in 2023 that any Ring employee or contractor could view customers' private videos, that one employee watched thousands of recordings of women in bathrooms and bedrooms, and that weak protections let hackers take over cameras. Ring paid $5.8 million for refunds and must run a privacy and security programme with multi-factor authenticationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary.

The shopping app itself supports two-step verification and passkeysPasskeyA way to sign in without a password. Your device holds a key tied to one website or app and unlocks it with your fingerprint, face or PIN.More in the glossary. Turn one on; most Amazon account takeovers start with a reused password.

Scammers using Amazon's name

This is the risk most people will actually meet. In its October 2021 data, the FTC found that about one in three people reporting a business impersonator said the scammer claimed to be Amazon: about 96,000 reports and more than $27 million lost in a year, with a median loss of $1,000. About 70% started with a phone call, often about a fake purchase or a "refund" that requires remote access to your computer. People over 60 were more than four times as likely to lose money.

Inside the app, the risk comes from third-party sellers: counterfeits, unsafe electrical goods and inflated reviews. Check who the seller is on the product page and prefer items "sold by" or "dispatched from" Amazon for anything electrical or for children.

How to use Amazon more safely

1. Turn on two-step verificationTwo-factor authenticationSigning in with a second proof of identity on top of your password, such as a code from an app, a security key or a passkey.More in the glossary or a passkeyPasskeyA way to sign in without a password. Your device holds a key tied to one website or app and unlocks it with your fingerprint, face or PIN.More in the glossary in your account's security settings.
2. If anyone calls about an order, hang up and check Your Orders in the app. Never pay with gift cards or install software for a refund.
3. Turn off interest-based ads in your account's advertising preferences, and review Alexa voice history if you have an Echo.
4. Check your memberships and subscriptions page to make sure you are not paying for Prime by mistake.

How we scored it

Security (72) is Amazon's strongest factor. Regulatory record (25) is weighed down by the $2.5 billion Prime settlement and the Alexa and Ring orders, and privacy (45) reflects how much data the app links to you. Compare YouTube, another giant with an advertising business, which scores 54.