Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdjk | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and amazon gets to put a sticker on every item you sell (or at least the SKUs you enroll in transparency) no matter what channel you sell it in. I can’t imagine why vendors might not want to do that if they want to sell anyplace other than Amazon.

View on HN

Seems like you're being sarcastic? But I don't see why. It means all your customers would get the anti-counterfeiting benefit, not only the ones who purchase from Amazon, since non-Amazon customers can verify the code too.

Seems like a win for everybody. (Also, you're putting the codes on your items yourself, Amazon's not doing it.)

Yes, I am being sarcastic. There may be a benefit to customers but your products will have calls to action on them to download and install an Amazon app on your phone when you’re in a retailer like Target or Best Buy. I think that’s the real reason for the transparency program.

It's not at all clear to me that people will be able to tell what that T+code sticker is on their product they purchased at e.g. Best Buy. I think the purpose of the program is to fight counterfeits.

It doesn't seem like a very good system. Counterfeiters will simply buy a real batch of products, and then copy each T-code onto their counterfeits 1000 times, then resell both the real and the counterfeit.

It says Amazon scans the code before shipping - presumably it would be a red flag if the scan says the product was already sold.

I assume that the barcode is encrypted using a private key, and decrypted by Amazon or the app using a public key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com