Naver Expands 'Safety Assurance' Beyond Commerce to UGC... Strengthening Protection for Cafes and Bands

[Financial News] Naver announced on the 5th that it will expand the 'Safety Assurance' program not only to commerce but also to communities such as cafes, bands, and blogs to strengthen the establishment of a safe transaction ecosystem across Naver. Currently, Naver's pre-response rate for counterfeit products in shopping malls exceeds 95%. It was found that the exposure of posts related to counterfeit goods in the community area has also decreased, resulting in a decrease in the number of reports.
Naver established the 'Safety Assurance' program in October last year and disclosed measures to protect users, such as preventing the distribution of counterfeit products, detecting abnormal transactions, and blocking the distribution of hazardous products. Naver is particularly blocking sellers with a history of counterfeiting from the smart store entry stage and is also applying pre-detection technology for suspicious malls. In addition, by implementing policies such as one-strike-out and purchase protection measures, more than 1,000 malls are pre-blocked monthly, resulting in the pre-response rate for counterfeit products in the shopping area reaching 95.6% this year. Furthermore, the number of partner rights holders and brand companies that appraise the authenticity has been expanded to over 300.
Naver is also expanding its safety assurance activities to the user-generated content (UGC) ecosystem. In cafes and bands, when keywords related to counterfeit products are entered, the search results are blocked based on those keywords and data. Additionally, in blogs and cafes, detection tools are being enhanced to block posts promoting and selling counterfeit products, and sanctions are being expanded on an individual community basis. As a result, the number of reports of counterfeit product sales suspensions in cafes, bands, and blogs has decreased significantly every year, with the number of reports in the first half of 2025 decreasing by 50% compared to the same period last year. Naver plans to further improve the accessibility of the counterfeit report menu in bands within the year and enhance the automatic detection function for counterfeit products, thereby strengthening the safety assurance program in the UGC area.
Starting from September 1, the 'Intellectual Property Rights Clean Program' will also be introduced. If it is confirmed that the same seller has infringed intellectual property rights more than 20 times in a week, warnings (1st time), cautions (2nd time), and sanctions (3rd time or more) will be applied, and if repeated infringements occur, all products of the sales mall will not be exposed to shopping searches for a certain period. As a result of strengthening pre-measures such as improving detection tools that detect phishing patterns such as inducing cash direct transactions and luring to external phishing sites, the cumulative number of buyer damage reports from January to July this year decreased by more than 80% compared to the same period last year. Yubongseok, head of Naver Policy and RM, said, "Through the 'Safety Assurance' program, which has accumulated technical and policy know-how, Naver is working to protect buyers from counterfeit and hazardous products and to create a shopping environment where both sellers and buyers can trust and trade," adding, "We will expand the safety assurance program across the Naver ecosystem, including shopping and UGC, to build a healthy platform environment and increase service reliability."



yjjoe@fnnews.com Yoonju Cho Reporter