Fake Flash Storage Scams in 2023 - Scam MicroSD Card from Amazon
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- I've made a few videos on this topic in the past, but are fake flash storage scams still around in 2023. Yes. Yes they are, and it's worse than ever.
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Atomic Shrimp subreddit: / atomicshrimp
Links to some resources on fake flash storage:
Burnintest: www.passmark.com/support/bit_...
FakeFlashTest: rmprepusb.com/tutorials/007-a...
RMPrepUSB:rmprepusb.com/
H2TestW (site is in German, but Google Translate works on it): www.heise.de/download/product...
F3: fight-flash-fraud.readthedocs...
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:27 Device for testing
01:28 (Fake) reviews
02:53 Unboxing
03:52 Testing
06:28 Results & analysis
07:09 How does the scam work?
09:08 Refund
09:43 Amazon's Response
11:59 Tips
13:26 TEST your flash storage - Jak na to + styl
*Afterthoughts & Addenda*
"992?" - if you think you're hearing me say 992, you're mistaken. It's nine hundred and eighty two, but because I'm talking quickly, ithe 'and' becomes 'n'. If you're hearing 992, you're probably from somewhere that doesn't have the 'and'
*Validrive* - Many thanks to everyone who mentioned or recommended Validrive - this appears to be a utility that can perform a _fast_ test to determine whether removable media has been spoofed; I say 'appears' only because I can't fully test this right now (I have no fake devices to hand at the moment); all I can say about this software at the present time is:
-- I tested it on a genuine 128GB SD card and it confirmed it was genuine
-- It's FAST - it took less than a minute to to test the 128GB card (H2TestW took 2 hours)
-- The source is, so far as I am able to verify, trustworthy - the software is available free here: www.grc.com/validrive.htm
I will want to test this software on a few fake devices before I can update this, my rather lukewarm recommendation, with something more heartfelt. I hope this makes sense. I've ordered some more obvious scam devices for this testing.
I am amazed you do not listen to the Security Now podcast and follow Steve Gibson and his various interests. Steve is an uber nerd on security, drive technologies and testing, has some useful freeware and payware. At least keep an eye on the podcast notes which are provided in text format for easy perusing.
It sounds good, but I suppose I'm not really a podcast consumer
...Wow. I haven't seen anything from GRC in a long time. I didn't know they were still in operation.
I seem to remember that there is a 'verify' checkbox in the windows formatting program.
@@zairadileI bet you remember ShieldsUp and the other freeware Steve made. Of course, that’s if you are old enough!
The idea of Amazon shutting down negative reviews like that is scary. Can't say I'm surprised though...
@@_peters6221supposedly the FTC is finally overhauled and going after then for illegal monopoly or something of the sort, I'm interested to see where that lands the site even if the suit itself is not successful.
That has been the case for years now.
Amazon-basic: They have been sued many times over that cause these are all amazon-made counterfeits! Amazon is stealing the designs of good-selling items and then de-ranking the original one.
It is been going for years, I think, with Amazon.
Ali express, until some time ago, didn't allow vendors to delete or hide bad reviews so vendor with bad reviews would just close the store and open another one, full of the same bad stuff, but now vendors can simply delete or hide bad reviews.
If it's that, that's extremely sad and shows they don't have a smidge of integrity left. In Amazon's early days, when it was introducing reviews, an investor suggested they only show the positive reviews on the website, and Amazon said heck no, we show all the reviews.
EDIT: And it's also really stupid from a customer service perspective (which Amazon has a cultlike obsession with). It's not like Amazon itself makes any more money from these scam cards than it does from real ones (especially if customers return the scam cards), and showing negative reviews for a scam card would direct a user to buy and keep a real one.
My theory of why Atomic Shrimp's review got taken down is because the 64 GB size card _is_ genuine, and the scammer is using it as an alibi.
There’s a reason I don’t use Amazon
The fact that 64gb cards are cheap enough to be used for fakes is wild to me. Just a few years ago that "small" size would've been real expensive.
doesn't seem like long ago that 4GB cards were being spoofed as new cutting edge 64GB ones
And the 64GB would have been an HDD drive
@@TheHobohobbit Exactly, I still kinda expected a 2 or 4gb card. I guess those just arent made anymore even for scams.
@@RisingRevengeanceThey actually are made, but for niche purposes
I got a 256mb usb stick for 10 euros yeaaaars ago on sale as a kid and i was happy as hell…
I work in an Amazon warehouse, and we occasionally get investigation trouble tickets based off customer feedback to verify authenticity, and theyll be given instructions to sample x number of products in the warehouse of that item and will often get multiple sites to test. It is likely this item was tested, and that all of their tests were just "Plug into computer and screenshot the device properties," which of course reported the fake capacity. We don't exactly have the most tech savvy people doing jobs like this.
I'm not surprised that Amazon removed your review of this SD card because this happened to me once in the past and now I am permanently banned from leaving reviews on products.
Didn't know that they'd do something like that. What a bunch of
wonderful people. 😄👍
Are Amazon making a profit from these items? There's your answer
Me too, after leaving many 1 star reviews on fake products I am perma banned from leaving reviews or asking questions
@@alasdairmackenzie905they're in cahoots with the scammers
Between refund fake product and leaving negative review on fake sellers they would choose the refund option.
It's also possible that Amazon's "investigation" consisted of nothing more than inserting the card into a test machine and accepting what the OS told them.
There was no invesrigation. They just have AI that responds to complaints.
I doubt they'd ever bother having everything necessary lying around to do tests for every fraud accusation. They probably just saw that the SD exists and called it good, if they even did anything at all.
Yeah, that's why he should explained it a bit better in his review, so that other costomers and amazon employes can understand the problem.
when i did a review years ago, all they asked for was a video of proof.
i wouldnt mind betting the seller could also send a real card to amazon, claiming it was the one sent to shrimp.
I cannot imagine they went as far as actually obtaining one.
Also my theory on why the review was removed is this:
The seller requested it to be removed and used a screenshot of the properties tab to show it "was" the real (fake) storage capacity of 962gb.
Naturally, a person with 0 technical understanding would look at that, take it as face value and presume it's legit, therefore you're lying.
That's my theory.
0 technical understanding, and 0 time to parse any technical information.
That sounds like a very likely case
Or a bot. Do people even do these jobs anymore?
@@Dontstopbelievingman im fairly certain they do. I dont think big companies have bots trained to e.g. know what a flash drive showing the correct capacity looks like yet
@@Dontstopbelievingman
At least in the case of social media moderation, it's a combo of both. But honestly the overworked guy (most likely in a country with few labour laws and no minimum wage) who is paid peanuts to "audit" the content flagged by the bot probably gives precisely zero shits. He's not paid enough to.
Waterproof SD cards are very useful indeed.
During an unexpected monsoon my SD card was perfectly safe. The laptop was completely ruined but the SD card was fine!
I rate it 5 out of 5 banana.
I read monsoon as honeymoon and was very confused but if that's what you like who am I to judge
A couple things to keep in mind when buying storage devices (which I'm sure many people here know already):
- The storage amount is nearly always a power of 2 (typically in GB) e.g. 32, 64, 128 etc, which 982 is most certainly not
- Due to formatting quirks, the amount of storage reported by the OS is usually slightly less than advertised, for example a 32GB USB stick might show up as having 29GB of space on it. The fact that this supposed 982GB SD card showed up as having exactly 982GB of space would be a red flag for me (on top of all the others)
An 18TB external HDD actually has ~16.75 TB when viewed on File Explorer. What's interesting is there's a surprising amount of people who don't know that and even leave negative reviews saying "It's not really 18TB". 🤣🤣
My wife bought some resin and hardener through Amazon that would not cure when mixed correctly. This was evident in the odd poor review but these seemed to come and go after delivery. She left a negative review to warn others that the resin never cures and we got an e-mail to say the review could not be published as it mentioned Sellers, Delivery, Packaging, Pricing or Availability. Altered it and we got the same email you got to say it would be taken down so it looks like Amazon are complicit here unfortunately.
Your wife?
Funny, I also just bought some resin and your comment made me go back to the listing. Who would have thought, there are a ton of way too positive reviews and a small handful of ones that say the resin doesn't cure. I am still awaiting delivery, but I will give an update here once I tested it myself
Yes, her wife. @@bomlife1572
@@captainevenslower4400 make sure to return the amount and say that it's defective. These scam sellers don't expect returns, and it costs them to deal with them!
Resin is (surprisingly) expensive. I never buy expensive things online, I'm not rich enough to take big losses to scammers (and even if I was, I wouldn't want to do so on principle). Just last week, I had to get a refund for a $20 item that was defective and not what the listing said and told PayPal that they make me want to avoid risking spending more than ~$5 on eBay if they don't give me a refund. I've been bitten enough times to never trust anyone. 🤷
Fake products on Amazon are a serious issue. I have personally been burned by at least 5 separate counterfeit products on Amazon. Things that I own a legitimate version of and did a comparison in my review. It was obvious from the packaging, or the molding of the product, or the overall quality. I made reviews on Amazon and they were all removed. So, I cancelled my Prime account years ago. I rarely purchase on Amazon these days. I would rather pay for shipping, and get my package in a week than deal with fake cheap garbage. Good video Shrimp!
I've not bought from Amazon in ages, only most recently using the site to find a headset for work (my workplace will buy it for me). The whole site has really become a minefield with more mines than safe ground to step on. Too many random, fake companies I've never heard of and thus don't trust. After I nearly got burned with a portable car charger (not that it didn't work, but that it didn't arrive), I've decided to not shop with Amazon anymore.
They are surprisingly more expensive than other shopping sites. They hide the shipping cost from you and the constant badgering to sign up for prime pushes me away.
It’s been a long time since Amazon could be described as a reputable retailer. Their search algorithm seems to boost counterfeits and their own supply chain seems to have an alarming amount of fakes.
It feels like they are just trading on prior reputation and customer inertia. Even ignoring the fakes I haven’t found them price competitive for ages
@@BewareTheLilyOfTheValley The gibberish brand names are the result of Amazon’s Brand Registry program, which was originally pitched as a way to combat counterfeits. It gives sellers control over product listings that contain their products and the ability to protect themselves against unauthorized sellers using their names. Getting in the Brand Registry program requires a registered trademark, so they just pick a string of random letters, because it’s unlikely to already be taken. (These sellers don’t care about the quality of the mark, just the ability to get it registered so that they can use Amazon’s Brand Registry program.)
Can only trust physical stores you walk into again.
The fact that the AI knows that turnips smell whimsical is terrifying
It's entirely possible the genuine reviews are for a different product, such as the 64 GB one. Amazon does a really, really bad job of separating reviews. For example, I've seen plenty of reviews for the wrong console version of a game, or the wrong format of a movie.
Well to be fair for the vast majority of games if it is Xbox or PS the difference is negligible.
Hello @The_Nametag! I enjoyed your Infinite Doom series (and everything else you've put out going all the way back to Cybermage, etc.). Keep up the good work on those older games!! Also, great comment you left here :)
Omg this was so frustrating when I was researching items on Amazon
I was buying items for a Guinea pig and often times these items would come in multiple sizes, but the reviews were just a mix of all of the products instead of the specific size I was looking at
i'm actually shocked that amazon, one of the biggest companies in the world, doesn't have a clear avenue to report fraudulent products
That's because doesn't care about anything other than profit. I honestly don't understand how can anyone shop there.
@@Meg_A_Byte Well if you know what you're doing there are genuinely good products to be had, and their shipping is among the fastest in the world. It's extremely disappointing that they don't have a better review process, but what can you do :( Somebody long ago probably realised the problem with economies of scale, it's cheaper for them to just refund you than to pay someone to actually investigate every claim.
@@BeheadedKamikaze Probably that, you would think these bad products would hurt the reputation but since you can basically return anything without problems I guess most people won't get mad enough even though returning takes time. Then again, most people probably never realise they got scammed (either they never reach the actual capacity or just think it died and to be frank I had so many SD cards die on me)
They'd be implicitly implying fraud is a common issue. Better for them to just pretend it's not. 🥲
@@BeheadedKamikazeit should not be on the consumer to have to have some sixth sense for real vs fake products on a website meant to sell you workable items. There shouldn’t be anything fake to begin with. You don’t go to a store and just hope half the products aren’t useless junk that don’t do what they advertise. This problem can be fixed; laws could be put in place and enforced to crack down on this type of consumer abuse. Sadly, the powers that be don’t care enough, and many people don’t either, even when they’re being scammed.
That is an infuriating response from Amazon; I doubt Atomic Shrimp is the only person to report identical concerns, so Amazon must be removing loads of similar reviews/warnings.
One tip I would add is, if the storage device has an unusual storage capacity, just like that fake memory card, 982 GB, I've never seen any well-known brand use that, they would more likely use 1TB, this is just an example, you can apply the same to different capacities. Hope this helps!
You're right, but unfortunately in this case, Amazon seems to be flooded with 982GB SD cards of a variety of different (absurdly-named) brands. All fake, but customers see scams alongside other scams and sometimes think "Well, they can't ALL be fake"
Numbers should be a power of 2 I think
either im old or my ass would have seen that for $13 and instantly know it was fake because i remember the first TB drive costing over 4k like a decade ago.
@@greatleader4841 Yeah, they're cheaper now, but definitely not that cheap, I mean if 1TB is at that price, how much should the 64GB cost? Which should tell you that something's not right.
It's like a phishing scam email with spelling and grammar mistakes, anyone technical will avoid it because it is extremely suspect, that way they guarantee less people reporting the scam item they bought. It's all a part of the social engineering involved.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as smart as you, pal. I bought a 256gb thumb drive a couple of years ago and if I remember right, it was about 40 quid. Always wondered why I was unable to view the data I've stored on it but after watching your videos I now know why. Amazon is a big scam and I avoid it 100%. Thank you so much for your videos and content, it's not only educational but also very good entertaining. Have a great week and stay safe, pal.
Is 40 quid same as 40 pounds ? Or is quid more like our pennies?
What's a penny?@@JustanotherLiz
@@JustanotherLizpounds, dollars ,euros
40 quid is pounds its just a shorter way to say pounds. And for penny's we say p as p. 😊
That's why we call it Scamazon.
The amazon email infuriated me too. I almost thought they actually reacted to your complaint... Good job and cheers
Maybe the reason why Amazon claims that the product is authentic is because the seller put the 982 GB option as an alternative color, thus basically arguing that they delivered what they promised: a different color option
It could also be the kind of language used at aliexpress?
They frequently suggest other variants are "colours"
except the specs in the description don't match
982G is the model number. The customer is confusing it with capacity. Therefore it is not fake.
@@debochchgenius
@@debochch Which isn't much of a defence when the storage capacity field also shows 982 GB.
I test my flash storage devices by putting a small stick on top of them, balancing a crystal on either end of the stick and then, with a specially crafted set of rods, I sit very still and let my body feel the storage. It's possible to gauge capacity to within 1KB for those that know what they're doing.
Both crystals and rods are available on my Amazon store and usually ship within 8 weeks.
On the bit around 11:11 Something similar happened to me once on eBay. I sold a laptop and the buyer (AKA scammer) claimed that the box had been opened and was empty. I checked the courier website for tracking and could see the buyer had accepted delivery, with what appeared to be an intact box. Aside from the question of why you would accept delivery of something if you knew the box was empty, they requested a refund and I flatly refused. The buyer then opened a dispute resolution and eBay seemed to take their side, even though it was obvious by this point that I was in the process of being scammed. To cut a long story short (ish) I eventually showed the buyer the photo the courier had taken of them receiving delivery and they eventually withdrew the dispute. It could have been a lot worse and it put me off selling on eBay.
That email from amazon is ridiculous. That kind of makes me want to never buy from amazon again.
I found out the hard way that SD cards could lie about their capacity, when my first 3D printer came with a 64GB SD card that'd lose any data at around the 8GB mark. Took me several failed prints that just stopped half way up to work out what was happening.
I discovered my first fake copying MPEG files onto a card and discovering that, while they all played, they all seemed to have the same content. Hey ho, 8GB card masquerading as 64GB.
Wait, from a well-known brand? I've had at lost one die on me (including the one in my dashcam), but that'd mean the maker failed to validate the SD cards that they bundle.
@@alext3811 Mine was branded a Samsung I think, but that turned out to have faked too.
@@lilwoodiewood3457who cares about the semantic
I had to pause the video to let my own blind rage pass. Thanks for going to all this trouble for us, Shrimp. ❤❤
Amazon should be charged criminally for peddling obvious trash like this. Shutting down reviews like this should also be illegal.
I see it all the times, even for items that are not downright fraud - Chinese sellers all seems to remove seller reviews by claiming "it was shipped from Amazon". And Amazon just accepts it and deletes the review from being counted towards seller feedback. So, all the chinese sellers have 5 stars on the storefront feedback page.
It disgusts me. Thanks for making these videos for awareness.
Agree 💯
Its true: scams are still scams. However, is John Barosa still John Warosa?
They just work in the same office
No they work in the same office and use each other’s email accounts.
be rest assured!
Well never know
Please do not tell me anything more of the soul called Mr Barrister John Barosa, only Barrister Mohammad Hassan.
I remember a time when it was only eBay that was the scammers playground.
I also remember when there were far more negative reviews per product if it was a bad one. Nowadays you might get lets say 500 likes and maybe 5-10 dislikes.
Some 3 star reviews tell you they tried leaving a 1 star review but it got deleted so they came back with a middling review that wouldn't get noticed to warn us. I wonder how many get deleted without us knowing about it when we're basing our purchase on the reviews.
eBay is still garbage and refuses to block various vulnerabilities that scammers have been exploiting for years no matter how many times I've reported them (even contacting a special support team I was given a direct line to 😒), but at least they've clamped down on some things like fake media and batteries which used to be very prevalent on eBay but are harder to find now. - Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, Best Buy, etc. all now support third-party sellers on their sites, so they're all risky now.
I never even consider an eBay seller with less than 99% positive reviews. 500 positive reviews and 10 negatives really means 10 negatives and 500 bots. I shouldn't have to go directly to a seller's page and comb through their inventory to identify scammy practices, but here we are. eBay also doesn't care about counterfeits. Saw a seller selling fake DVDs and reported a few dozen of their items. They were still at it a month later. (The bizarre thing about this story is that anyone's buying fake DVDs in 2023. If you're going to steal it, why not just torrent for free instead of paying for some schonky Malasian rip-off?)
I've always posted a question about specs on suspect items, mentioning relative facts that would support if it were real, or tell you it's fake. they stick around a week if nobody answers, but you can start a short discussion that usually just stays up as long as the product is listed
That's actually a good idea. Even the text of the review could be understated. "Product worked, but its real capacity is 64 GB instead of 982 GB."
I write negative reviews on Amazon all the time and have only ever had one deleted. The real problem is they try to automate everything and go well beyond what is actually reasonable with current tech. It can be rather easy to tell a bot what it wants to hear so it does the action you want it to do. The best AI has the mentality of a toddler. And, actually, it thinks more like a pigeon than a human.
If you want the bot to recognize your comment as valid and not simply some form of hate speech, you might want to have Chat GPT write your comment. Their bot will have some idea of what proper language is supposed to look like and merely deviating from that could cause it to be flagged as, 'inappropriate'.
These scams being so prevalent is also because they're highly encouraged by amazon. It is exceptionally difficult to leave a review claiming a product to be fake or a scam because amazon's moderation team filters those reviews and deletes them
Good to hear Amazon's UK customer support as at least as helpful as that in the US. I've dealt with them directly many times over the years and there are layers and layers of service departments siloed from one another not knowing what each other is doing. Sometimes you'll actually speak to someone helpful, typically a supervisor, that will be knowledgeable enough to forward your call to their seller central or vendor central department, but I've seem some items delisted the same day after pointing out their false listings.
Given how devastating it can be to lose data, I reckon there should be huge fines for companies knowingly selling or manufacturing fake flash. Similar to if I ran a business selling fake medicine.
These things are made and in and sold by Chinese companies, there isn't a single fine in the world they will care about. They will just register another company name and continue selling the same thing over and over.
they need to be able to hold international vendors accountable. They are selling in OUR country, to Americans and we should have protections from any fraudulent products.
@@CazRaX i appreciate it is not possible to fine a dodgy company in China. It is possible to fine Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, temu, etc. They need to be doing their utmost to prevent fake flash being sold on their platforms and also warning victims pre and post purchase.
I think you mean that no one should have to deal with garbage
@@pauls5745 the seller is called Amazon, and the owner is an American like you. It doesn't matter where the goods are produced.
What I really love about this video, is that you're not only raising awareness but you've also given thousands of people all the information we need to mass report this SD card. It won't be available much longer, I can be certain of that.
Until it pops up again under a different seller account with a slightly different description. That's the real issue with these fake products, it's far more difficult for us honest folk to get it removed than it is for the dishonest peddlers to keep distributing it.
@@NorthStarBlue1yep, this time it will be under the "Tiechris" brand.
There is a great video about this topic
Basically, these aren't real companies and all they need to do is register a new company name and they're up and running within a few days again.
Went to my MP about the issue with Amazon skipping out of their responsibility on warrantee with marketplace and the credit card companies doing the same for the consumer credit act. All I got back was a party political praise letter saying how great the government was for introducing the consumer rights act which actually did little to enhance consumer rights. Useless.
The problem is that if Amazon is removing negative reviews then it’s false advertising so they need to be held to account.
Thanks for the video it was an eye opener. I was wondering why it felt like reviews were feeing way too positive now days.
These fakes storage device videos of yours are so repetative, but that very much speaks to how persistent the scam is and I do think these occational update videos are super important. At the very least, this could be the first time some folks are hearing about it and how it works.
Yeah, it kind of feels like a duty at this point. I have to make these videos because people are determined to believe in scams.
@@AtomicShrimplove you
I am one of those folks only hearing this for the first time. I only watch this channel occasionally and am only somewhat aware of common scams and strategies. I knew that suspicious flash drives are dangerous and I should obtain them from a trusted source or else risk irreparably damaging my devices, but this was the first time I've heard of someone illegitimately modifying the drive's properties to spoof a drive as bigger than it initially appears, nor was I aware of the precise consequences of using such a device.
So yeah, thanks Shrimp.
@@webbowser8834yeah, the world is a big place and there's a lot of stuff going on. Nobody can know everything, so it is no shame when that happens.
Mindboggling how much worse the expirience on amazon has become. You used to be able to buy things for cheaper sometimes, and it wasnt overrun with scams or dodgy products. Thanks for the video Shrimp
It's way worse than ebay or aliexpress these days.
@@FuelPovertyebay has gotten worse over the years too
@@FuelPoverty As garbage as eBay is, and as many scammers as there are on it and as much as eBay has refused to stop various abuses that scammers have been using for years, they've at least clamped down and made it harder to find fake media and fake batteries since a decade ago when they were full of it. (Aliexpress is still full of fake junk.)
@@FuelPoverty What makes it decent is faster shipping and that you'll almost always get a refund if you do a return within 30 days, and that security can't be found as easily elsewhere. It still sucks though and is far worse than it used to be
Also as a pro tip when considering product reviews (which can actually be super helpful), stick to the 2-4 star range. I've found these to be a lot more genuine as they're more likely to go into detail on the pros AND cons of a product.
That’s a good tip, thank you!
Additionally, in cases like this, where Amazon will furiously defend the authenticity of a product, it's helpful to "play dumb" and not call its authenticity into question. Instead, simply say "I put about 100 GB of videos on this drive, and it works for some of them, but some of the videos wouldn't play. Might be some kind of defect but this drive seems unreliable to me."
I bought a vacuum sealer that came with a card saying I would get a $20 gift card if i left a positive review. So I left a negative review stating that the seller was trying to buy positive feedback (as well as actually reviewing it). Amazon refused to publish my review, without giving a clear reason... It's almost like they don't have the customer's best interests as their top priority!
I mean $20 is $20
Amazon won't let me write reviews anymore. They allow scammers to write fake reviews, but real people can not. I reviewed a book by someone with the same last name as mine, and Amazon accused me of self review. ( we were no relation )
I write reviews & I'm real.
Well yes, The scammers pay a little to keep the fake reviews. Would you (amazone) send away a person/client/company who pays your bills?
That action from Amazon is unbelievable! I assume it might be convenience and laziness. They got a complaint from the seller and found it easier to remove your review than to engage with the seller.
With megacorporations, laziness is malice. They could buy effort, but they choose not to.
It is the 3rd possibilty you've mentioned.
It happened to me just last month, when I purchased a couple shirts that arrived with the wrong pattern, and with a motherboard that wasn't working.
I tried to make a negative review for both articles and they all got rejected. First one because I used english instead of my own language (even though the motherboard came from Australia). Then I tried in spanish and they said it didn't comply with the rules, although they didn't mention where that was. Same thing for the shirts one.
The thing that makes me think it's not depending on the seller it's because the shirts seller was very friendly and well-behaved to me, inmediately sent me the correct shirts and didn't even ask me to return the other ones, so I don't believe they are the ones that stopped the review from being posted.
Similar experience in past. Reporting fake shops or practices on Amazon or informing the public by leaving a review with evidence (!) has become nearly impossible.
Nearly impossible to shop on Amazon nowadays.
I had no idea it was so hard to detect the fakes and that the consequences could be so dire. What a mess. Thanks for the video.
imagine if a lawyer or investigator got one of these mixed in with file work.
this could literally lose cases.
Consequences can be a lot more dire than some lost data depending what the product is.
My friend at work just brought a 982gb usb drive, I informed it was fake and explained how and why. Amazon/ebay is now just a dodgy stall you used to get down the market. I feel the government has genuinely lost control, amazon would just come out with some PR bluff that they take all fakes seriously etc.. Add to this the fake OBD dongles for your car which claim to increased fuel efficiently, they contain just led's. Thanks shrimp for continuing to highlight this.
I'm wondering why they're picking 982GB specifically. I have a feeling it'd be harder to pick out fakes if they stuck to a power-of-two capacity.
@@zairadile Because the real ones aren't power of two anymore due to accounting for spare sectors.
Even if those dongles actually worked, they'd just destroy your engine by running it too lean.
This explanation is so well done, and the editing on this channel has really taken a leap forward with this project imo.
it's insane to think that ebay has a better system to handle this than trillion-dollar amazon does, but it also makes absolute sense
Since you frequently mention established brick and mortar stores also selling fraudulent flash storage I think it would be interesting for you to go to one next year and buy an improbably sized and priced sd card or usb stick and test that
Unless you're referring exclusively to those shop's websites and not their physical locations, lord knows I don't trust anything coming out of Walmart's site, (or their proper shops, honestly) but if you do mean their physical shops then I think going to one of those would really punctuate the proliferation of fake flash storage
I've not seen fake flash in stores in the wild, but many people have told me about cheap 2tb USB sticks they bought at a physical Walmart retail store (some of the people realised they had been scammed after watching my video, others had been scammed, but didn't believe it, and we're here to argue with me)
This is a great video! Public awareness is great and very relevant. Unfortunately, there's no video like this in my native language to share, but I hope tech influencers do more of this videos so less people can be scammed. Thank you for your service.
There's an AI tool that autotranslates and redubs a video to different languages (not talking about the one CZcams is testing, a third party, separate one), including Polish, Spanish, English, Portuguese and many more. Forgot what it was called though, but it's out there. Now if we could only convince Atomic Shrimp to use it...
@@UltimatePerfectionI'd translate his videos (or at least subtitle them) if he gives me full permission to do so
@@UltimatePerfection translators aren’t always accurate, so you gotta be careful with them
I've been having this problem lately with a product you wouldn't expect: Shirts. A shirt I like went on sale so I tried to order a few but what I received would either be the different/less expensive shirts from the same brand or really cheap shirts that lacked any identifying tags/marks. I'm familiar with the shirts so I knew that I had received the wrong product but I wonder how many people don't know the difference and didn't get what they paid for.
I stop trying to buy shirts from ebay, most shirts sellers on there even when show size chart with clear measurements in the description sends shirts that are chinese sizes with completely different measurement. For example if it say Large, 182cm, would show up one labelled Large, but in chinese which is equal to XXS, 132cm here. (Made up numbers, just showing the point)
Amazon taking down negative reviews to protect their own ego is one of the many reasons why I will never ever support them ever again.
When I buy a new MICROSD card, the first thing I do is to fill it up with video files and make sure they all play back. So far I've been lucky...
I just ran into one of these actually in the prime day sale. It was a 2tb micro sd for $20 with 5* reviews, but the reviews were for STICKERS. I reported it to amazon, and they actually got back with me telling me they were looking into it.
As storage gets cheaper it's getting harder to tell, considering you can get legitimate brand 256gb cards and flash drives for around $20 and dropping.
20 dollars for 256gb maybe but for 2tb and especially sd card, not usb or m2/sata ssd? c'mon
@@wiziek yeah, the "factor of 10" will be the indicator
I stopped submitting reviews after putting a lot of effort into reviewing a tiny PC computer that was rejected in a similar way. I included screen shots, and explained some features that I discovered that were not listed in the product description. All that effort to help out the seller was just tossed, so I'm done with writing reviews. I can give Amazon credit for one thing, they make it very easy to return a product.
@@lilwoodiewood3457 peak internet is not knowing if you're being satirical in this comment
the corporations are becoming more unhinged as time goes by and their absolute control is secured and exercised at will.
The evil *is* waxing worse and worse and most people still say the KJB is a book of fairy tales! No, that book is not only telling the truth and many years ahead of our current time, but it's the 100% word of God!
Expect the whole world to continue to grow more unhinged as time passes by.
Regarding the review being removed. All shops aka Sellers have such thing as shop health. The reviews and all actions they take can affect it and potentially damage the health which will cause less promotion, not being showed on top or even closure of the store. The seller (shop) most likely reported this reviews as malicious review to get funds back and because perhaps they had the brand authorisation (yes they proved they got the brand authorisation but continued selling look alike fake products) got the review removed.
I used to work in e-commerce and I hope this helps!
Hahaha .. "Davis Bon is still dead!"
That response from Amazon is absolutely stunning.
Always follow the money. Amazon purposefully doesn't have a good way to report scams, but removing your honest review is a new one for me.
Holy shit! Amazon really needs to be held accountable for this! It's so clear that there is currently no punishment at all for them lying and hiding genuine negative reviews!
I wonder if you could go to the police are some UK consumer protection agency with this? Because there is no way that completely dismissing your report that it's fake should be legal. Maybe it would even be worth regulating explicitly, so they have a responsibility to actually test it before selling it to consumers, even when they are just the middlemen?
Can't say I'm surprised. Just continually disappointed in the scammers who refuse to do honest work.
You need to publish that letter so Amazon can get sued for being in bed with these scammers.
Technically it's already been published in video form.
@@lightcycler4806 A nice idea but Trading Standards won't touch a company in China, and Amazon will just say they were acting in good faith receiving goods from the seller
Lol that’s not how any of this works
US FTC chair Lina Khan's antitrust lawsuit against Amazon might be interested in this too, even though it's technically their UK branch.
@SuperSmashDolls Amazon US is pushing these scams too.
As a general rule, I totally agree with your advice about not trusting formatting to show a fake. More accurately though, it's not actually that simple. When formatting in Linux, most filesystems that I tested did reads before completion by default. In my testing about a year or so ago, the only filesystem type that formatted without errors was exfat, and some wouldn't even mount after being formatted. The storage that I was testing on was using the black hole method (as opposed to the overwrite method). So the results might be different on the overwrite method. And therefore, like you say, formatting should not be trusted to uncover the scam.
In any case, thank you very much for keeping the conversation going. This is an incredibly cruel scam, and the more people who know to look out for it; the less data will hopefully be lost.
If you protest politely but firmly about a factual review being taken down it can be reinstated on Amazon. I have done this a few times, even once when I was sold a fake product by Amazon themselves. Insist, politely but firmly, that your review is accurate and must be reinstated. Do this over the phone not using a chat system or email. Honestly it is a service to other Amazon users and should always be done if you have the time.
When buying from Amazon, I always give more credence to the negative reviews, especially on products I don't know much about. More and more positive reviews are obviously fake or utterly useless. How can you give a product five stars and then say you haven't used it yet? 🤦♀️ My kids have all learned the hard way that if a product is priced way below the typical price, it's not what the seller claims it to be. Luckily, Amazon is good about refunding your money. I guess all we can hope for is that enough people return these items to annoy Amazon into dropping the sellers. Of course, more will take their place, and the cycle goes on.
I was looking at Lenovo Precision Stylus 2 clones yesterday and found Amazon actually marking items with a higher than normal return rate. This can be a decent indicator of "even if this is legit, maybe I should think twice before buying it".
I submitted a review of a hat I bought on Amazon that was from a reputable brand but broke immediately. In the text of the review I said that it was ironic that a cheap Chinese knockoff version of the hat I bought for my son appeared to be much more durable. I got the exact same email saying that they removed my review because the product was genuine. Of course that was beside the point, since I never said the product was counterfeit, but I wonder if they weren't just detecting words like "fake" and "knockoff" without actually reading the content of the review.
It would make a lot of sense that they do use an automatic stupid process!
Chinese
Products can contain carcinogens. I would advise you to look at the materials list on your sons hat and check to see if any are dangerous
@@bipinnambiar And even if the materials listed are safe it's safer to throw it away anyway. People should stop buying cheap Chinese crap from pathological scammers who leaked wuhan virus onto the world and then tried to cover it up.
your analogies/comparisons are always so good
Absolutely infuriating! It’s stunning that Amazon isn’t being held to account for this garbage.
that amazon reaction was infuriating. i wonder if they would do the same if you kept the card instead of returning it.
they would probably send a collections agency to get the card back (or the price of it), plus fees.
I think it was the review+report combo that got the review taken down, but maybe the return was also a factor
I wrote a 1 star review for this exact SD card (it was advertised on facebook) and Amazon said my review was against Amazon's TOS... When it clearly wasn't... @@AtomicShrimp
@@AtomicShrimp I think Amazon uses “counterfeit” here to mean that the product is claiming to be a certain brand but isn’t - something like the seller claiming the card was a Sandisk 982 GB card. The seller did not claim the card was a Sandisk card or some other recognizable brand, so it’s not “counterfeit” as Amazon’s complaint reviewing bot is probably using the term.
@@chemicalburrito782 I didn't report it as counterfeit
I was thinking "my uncle works at amazon I should share this with him"... them burst out laughing when I realized I just had the ultimate "my uncle works at Nintendo" moment except my uncle actually works at amazon... lul [to explain here in the US back in the '80s & '90s kids would make up random rumors about games and say my uncle works at Nintendo to explain why they knew it and that was so common that its a meme now...]
The algorythm really got you bad. I used to watch your videos all the time but somewhere around Cov youtube just stopped recommending. Glad you're still around, I'm gonna check you now regularly.
Thanks for the great vids, keep up the good work :)
I've had emails from whatever seller on Amazon asking me to remove a bad review and they would offer me 5 quid off or a reduction in price. I refused of course, but the shocking thing is people do actually do it and don't seem to understand the implications of doing so.
you know i usually watch these videos more just because i like your content rather than expecting some sort of info. i work a lot with hardware and while i think your videos are super informative, I've just been exposed to a lot of what you preach.
and yet i still had no idea that a drive format would fail to detect an issue like this :) always something to learn!
Glad to know I am not the only one that puts a "stuff" folder on their desktop, as a way to make it appear clean...
I have one on my phone, too. Appearance is everything. 😉
Yeah! It's the "I'll deal with it later" of file management
I always loved your voice most out of all the security vids I watch! Yes, even more than Jim Browning's voice, which is nice as well. I think it is your accent I like as well as your information, and your steady volume is easy on my ears and easy to understand. :) Thank you for saying some of the programs to use to verify the storage. Very helpful! Thank you!!
I can’t believe Amazon’s response! It’s bad enough that they are allowing these scams on their site, but to remove your honest review? I’ve tried to contact Amazon myself in the past so I know how hard it is to get through to someone who speaks English and actually cares…. but I wouldn’t let that one lie.
Thanks for doing these reviews. There are so many people that would get caught out if it weren’t for these videos. 👍
Thanks
Steve
That's such a weird response from Amazon. I've gotten products removed from Amazon using your videos as an example for the Amazon support team.
It is very likely the Seller using an automated process or procedure from Amazon.
Really helpful that you do this and it is obvious the amount of work you put into the presentation to make it very watchable as well as informative.
We bought a fake external SSD from Amazon (we knew it would be as it was too cheap) which I believe was supposed to be 5TB for about £70. When it arrived we were delighted to find they'd upgraded it to 12TB for the same price! The write speed was about that of a floppy drive so we sent it back without fully testing it.
Amazon also doesn't give you a way I have been able to find to complain about shipment issues.
They've removed my reviews that contain shipping complaints.
They also removed a review that mentioned that a competitor failed to provide something and that's why I came to Amazon for the product.
my solution: I no longer buy much of anything at all from Amazon. Almost everything (not just flash drives) that's not sold directly by Amazon is now a scam, a Chinese drop shop that sells cheap fakes.
Instead I buy most everything either directly from the manufacturer (if they offer the option) or from specialist retailers who have direct wholesale channels with manufacturers.
Less convenient than the one-stop-shop experience Amazon offers, but far less risky.
I ended up cancelling Amazon Prime and left a scalding review stating the extreme incidence of scams and Chinese fakery as the main reason for doing so.
If you're going to have a "throwaway" laptop that you don't mind getting blasted with viruses in the worst case scenario, is it worth having it connected to your network? I'm not exactly a network security professional, but I'm just thinking that you'd want the laptop as isolated as possible in case of a virus' presence! (I could always be wrong.)
There's a nonzero risk that some malware could hop over to something else on the same network, so yeah, isolation is a good idea, or at least connect it to a 'guest' network that is isolated from the ones you care about.
In reality, I've never encountered malware on one of these scam drives. I think the scammers want people's computers to stay alive so they can post reviews when they are bamboozled by the scam
Yes. Keep your systems firewalled. The likelyhood of it hopping are slim, but safety online is always a "better to have and not want, than need and not have".
When I do a bad review on Amazon I always give a good star rating and then a title my review with the products problem. This normally keeps the review up there.
whenever i've left a negative review on amazon they've also been removed, no matter how legitimate my complaints were
That Amazon email really triggered me. I'm lost for words.
What a lovely way to finish the quiet end of my shift.
The joys of barbering is when you've got a few minutes between cuts, it's Shrimp time 💙
Thanks for this. I knew Amazon purchases can be sketchy. I am very surprised about your review being removed.
I absolutely LOVED the tongue-in-cheek option number 3 as to why your review was taken down
Interesting and informative video. Five stars.
Now for the critical omitted detail: what brand of custard creams do you favor? I did a blind taste test a couple years ago with a few other people, and Tesco defeated Sainsbury’s and M&S, but I’m always on the lookout to improve my elevenses.
I go to Lidl. The quality is decent imo
I also go there for the Nestlé knockoffs, largely because I refuse to support the Nestlé corporation
A US citizen who likes custard creams?
@@philipareed lol'd. There are many Anglophiles here who will try anything British ... even the food.
Great food! Like Great Britain! Ever tried chicken tikka masala? @@studgerbil9081
@@philipareed I double-checked the Constitution: it’s permitted.
Amazon took down a review of mine for this very claimed reason (the product i bought was a supposed UV lamp that actually used white LEDs)
I don't read my email much, so when i re-posted the taken-down review, amazon removed *every review* ive written since 2013 (when i joined) stating that i violated their review TOS abd they have removed my ability to review anything ever again. I emailed them about this action, but 4 weeks later, no response. Amazon has clowns that verify product listings. Clowns that don't know (or don't care) how to actually verify a legitimate product, and they also (somehow?) don't know how to (or more likely don't want to) check what actual market value is for the product that they sell for an absurdly low price.
Amazon wants to keep making their 30% cut at customers expense. Because they can't be as dumb as they pretend to be.
The vast majority of people won't find out it is fake till outside the return window so for such cheap products amazon does not care.
Would love to see a video where you report the product to Amazon. Report via the product page, not your order. The problem is that the scammer just starts a new business and buys fake reviews to get their products back up quick. It would take real effort from Amazon to stop the fakes.
Thank you for this, and for pointing out the model number! I have to look at these numbers all the time for my job, and they give some pretty pertinent info. If the scammer had been a little less lazy, they could've changed it, of course, but it clearly showed that this card was in fact a 64G capacity.
Thank you for verifying that Davis Bon, is indeed, still dead.
We can now be rest assured.
Great video, and I'm wondering now if I was scammed in the past with one of these from Amazon, that at the time I put down to the card being damaged as a lot of photos failed to save. Also, deeply craving custard creams now.
Addendum: As a fellow Brit, "10 seconds of blind fury" are strong words. Are you sure you weren't slightly annoyed or a bit cheesed off instead?
maybe a little grumpy?
I remember being a little bit out of sorts when receiving a scam product from Amazon. Actually I was rather peeved!
Just FYI it's not that anyone thought details could/would be spoofed, but simply that there's no way to check it's accurate outside of a full write/read, which is very slow and shortens the lifetime of devices.
Having the device report it's details and it just be trusted is pretty much the only option.
Please remember this goes all the way back to the 1950s, fraudulent hardware was not a major concern while extra writes on a hard drive with a 3,000 full block write lifespan were. As time went on the situation became worse, drives got bigger and cheaper sooner than their speed increased.
Unfortunately the best advice is buy a trusted brand from a trusted retailer that's not Amazon, and even then testing it yourself is a smart move.
Thank you for the information!
It should be remembered that Chinese gigabytes are about fifteen times smaller than in the rest of the world. That's because they count a bit as a byte. That gives their devices 1/8 capacity. Then they organize their bytes as nibbles (4 bits), which halves the capacity. This makes storage devices much less expensive to manufacture, which is very good.
Do you have a source for this? First time I'm hearing there's a literal third convention for data capacity labeling, sounds like a distortion of the bits/bytes discrepancy which typically results in stuff like a 1TB drive showing up as 982GB.
@@chatboss000 It was a joke.
@@Ajarylee-qh9ln Ah. Nevertheless.
This is one of the major issues with buying online compared to going to the shops. Most wouldn't sell these flash storage etc. with false values. But on amazon they will they will also sell dangerous items, often with quality issues due to it not being able to see the product before you buy it. Most things you buy li e about what they are it's just become standard to create false stats on Amazon, let alone the number of things I've bought that just don't work. Yet Amazon won't do anything as it makes them more money this way.
>going to the shops
With hoodrattery and most of stores closing (some even because of said hooodrattery), that's really hard to do these days.
I like your visual examples for the less technically inclined. And the spoofed names on the fake products are a hoot.
Hi, Shrimp! I love your videos. What I found to be the most interesting of the video, aside from watching you dismantle the scam itself, was the fact that Amazon was more than happy to keep all the obviously fake reviews on their platform, but decided to delete your real review. I guess, according to Amazon, it's seller is always right. And the customer ..... can be scammed, so long as the seller [read:scammer] is happy. I was recently looking on Amazon for an electric kettle. Found one for a reasonable price, with two glowing reviews which seemed to be written by two different people. I was going to buy it, until I looked at the photo which were added to each of the reviews. They were THE SAME EXACT photo! Taken in the same kitchen, with the same objects around the kettle! It still boggles my mind that Amazon, their algorithm, and whatever human(s) check the reviews before they go live, as amazon calls it, allowed this to happen. But, after what they did to your review, I'm not as surprised any more. Cheers, from Canada.
I had exactly the same experience when ordering some hard drives on amazon: when I received the drives, instead of being new, they were in fact recycled items, most likely from a data center. I returned the drives, gave as a reason the non conformity of the product and wrote a 1 star review mentioning the scam. The review was taken down within 48 hours…
I had no idea formatting the memory would fail too as that is what I do everytime I get a new memory stick. I believe I have fallen victim to one of these spoofs myself. Thanks for the education.
I'm sure someone mentioned it by now, I didn't see it but could have easily missed it. I'd guess the review "review" process is someone looking at the capacity listed in the descriptions and comparing to the capacity on the product images rather than doing any actual investigation. Still a shame it was taken down, especially with more fake (or fake looking anyway) reviews than ever before across Amazon, something they made a huge deal over cracking down on several years ago. Important, even if a little depressing, video!
Thank you for being you, I love your positive personality you bring to your videos
In short life has been full of ups and downs lately