INFORM Consumers Act: What Brands & Sellers Must Know

If you sell a physical product online, someone has probably tried to sell a knockoff of it. For years, the people behind those listings were nearly impossible to identify. They hid behind anonymous storefronts, vanished when a takedown landed, and reappeared under a new name the next week. The INFORM Consumers Act was written to change that. It is worth understanding whether you are a brand owner protecting your reputation or a seller trying to stay on the right side of the rules.

This guide explains what the law requires, who it applies to, and, most importantly for founders, how to use it as part of a practical brand protection strategy. (This is general information, not legal advice. Talk to a qualified attorney about your specific situation.)

What is the INFORM Consumers Act?

The INFORM Consumers Act is a U.S. federal law aimed at online marketplaces that host third-party sellers. Its goal is simple: make it harder for sellers of stolen, unsafe, or counterfeit goods to operate anonymously. Marketplaces must collect and verify information about their higher-volume sellers, and disclose certain details to shoppers.

The FTC enforces the law, and so do state attorneys general. According to the FTC's own business guidance, the civil penalty is $53,088 per violation (the January 2025 inflation-adjusted figure), so non-compliance is not a rounding error for a marketplace.

Who counts as a high-volume third-party seller?

Per the FTC, a seller is covered when, in any continuous 12-month period within the past 24 months, they made 200 or more separate sales or transactions of new or unused consumer products and reached $5,000 or more in gross revenues through that marketplace, with payments processed by the marketplace.

That is a low bar. A growing direct-to-consumer brand selling on a marketplace can cross it quickly, and so can the gray-market reseller undercutting you.

What marketplaces must do

Collect and verify seller information

Within 10 days of a seller qualifying, the marketplace must collect bank account information, a business tax ID (or taxpayer ID), and contact information, then verify it within 10 days of receiving it. At least once a year, sellers must certify that their details are unchanged or update them, and they must respond within 10 days.

Disclose seller identity to shoppers

Sellers with $20,000 or more in annual gross revenue on a marketplace must have their full name, a physical address, and contact information allowing direct, unhindered communication shown on listing pages, or in order confirmations and transaction histories.

Offer a way to report suspicious activity

Marketplaces must provide a clear and conspicuous electronic and telephonic mechanism on the listing for reporting suspicious activity.

Suspend non-responsive sellers

If a seller does not provide required information or respond to a certification request, the marketplace must send notice. If the seller still has not complied within 10 days of that notice, future sales must be suspended.

What this means if you are a brand owner

The Act does not stop counterfeiting by itself. It gives you better raw material to fight it:

• Identify who is behind a listing. Disclosed seller names and addresses make it easier to spot repeat offenders operating under multiple storefronts.
• Strengthen takedown requests. A report that references a verified entity, rather than an anonymous handle, is easier to act on.
• Use the suspicious-activity channel. It is a documented route, so log every report you file and the response you get.
• Separate legitimate resellers from bad actors. Known, disclosed sellers can be approached through authorized-reseller agreements, while the rest can be escalated.

For a deeper look at unauthorized sellers, see our guides on how to stop gray market sellers and how to stop counterfeits on Amazon.

What this means if you are a seller

If you sell on third-party marketplaces, treat compliance as routine operations. Keep your business information accurate and up to date, answer verification and annual certification requests within the 10-day window, and make sure your public contact details actually work. A missed email can lead to a suspended storefront, which for many small brands means lost revenue overnight.

Where the law stops, and technology starts

The INFORM Consumers Act focuses on knowing who sells. It does not tell a shopper whether the specific item in their hands is genuine. That gap is where product-level authentication comes in.

Serialized QR codes, NFC tags, and traceability records let a customer check authenticity in seconds, and give you data on where suspicious scans come from. Together with marketplace monitoring, they create two layers of defense: identify the seller, and prove the product. If you are exploring this, start with our posts on QR code product authentication and NFC authentication, or see how anti-counterfeiting software fits together.

A practical starting checklist

1. List every marketplace where your products are sold, authorized or not.
2. Document your authorized resellers so you can tell them apart from unknown sellers.
3. Set up a recurring review of listings that use your brand name or images.
4. File and log suspicious-activity reports with dates and outcomes.
5. Add product-level authentication so customers can verify what they bought.

Build protection that fits your brand

Every brand's risk looks different, and the right mix of monitoring, process, and product-level technology depends on your products and customers. At Esipick, a purpose-driven software agency, we help founders design and build brand protection software that fits how their business really works. If you would like to talk it through, book a free call with our team. You can also explore what our sister venture is building with AI at esipick.ai.