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Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits, and the severity of the issues surrounding this grows every day. For instance, my fr

Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits, and the severity of the issues surrounding this grows every day. For instance, my friend bought a camera that looked similar to the Arlo, but it contained a telnet backdoor. Another would ping a strange AliCloud VPS over UDP that appeared to contain data related to network configuration without any explanation or ability to be disabled, short of router firewall rules. As knockoff vendors get more clever at disguising their devices as the one's they're trying to copy, an increasing amount of less-technical users become ever-more at risk regarding their security and privacy.

macspoofing 9y ago
>Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.
- 0x0 9y ago
  Apparently you can even be denied Global Entry for buying from Amazon: https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits-global-entry-customs https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits...
  - PebblesHD 9y ago
    That was a very interesting read, with a few points about sharing of listings pages I hadn’t previously considered, thanks for posting it! The main point though, around being flagged for importing counterfeits is particularly concerning to me as a frequent traveller...
    - mynameisvlad 9y ago
      I'm sure they're allowed to do this since the membership agreement is incredibly strict and allows for no room for mistakes, but that doesn't mean they should be. Generally speaking, laws take into account intent and treat cases differently (or not at all) based on what the intent of the action is. It's pretty clear here that the person didn't intend to import a counterfeit bag (why pay full price for it?)
- sdiepend 9y ago
  How did you see it was a knockoff? What gave it away, just curious.
  - macspoofing 9y ago
    For the Bose headphones, I went online and found some guides that pointed out things to look for. For the SWISSGEAR luggage, I went to a retail location and inspected the same model ... also, couldn't register the serial number. Both knockoffs were of pretty good quality, but not at the same level as the originals.
- oxymoran 9y ago
  Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal”, it’s about getting something at or around retail price without having to go to the store. If you are looking for cheap name brand items, go to TJMax or something.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Amazon comingles goods in their warehouses between themselves and various sellers. You can buy something sold "by Amazon" and get sent an item sent to Amazon by a third party seller.
    - oxymoran 9y ago
      Right, meaning fulfilled by Amazon. But they have the brand registry indicating that something is “of a brand”. So you are saying that these products can be counterfeits? The item from the post says it’s “by wish power” not google(the logo is certainly alarming though). It’s a knockoff sure, but a pretty obvious one. I order everything from Amazon and I have never ever had a single problem with that. I am a pretty diligent shopper so maybe that helps?
      - taylorexpander 9y ago
        Right, so when you buy things from Amazon you have several options: 1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties. The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
        partisan 9y ago
        Is there a source confirming this?
- baldfat 9y ago
  I use to buy my electronic from specialty shops. Cameras from B&H and audio from Sweetwater. I switched because my purchases were less frequent and as much. My day to day work is education and I do side work and small videos for work. I know that B&H has had problems with ethical treatment of their workers and were fined $3.4 million by the labor department. One I heard things have been corrected and that things are different there but they actually were the only place I could go to get everything I needed. If you make a Purchase Order you don't want to fill out multiple of ones from new vendors. Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  well one issue is that the counterfeit gear is pushing out legit items. it is a bizarre day when I resort to buying from Ebay sellers to get what I want. now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
- AJ007 9y ago
  The last expensive electronic item I got from amazon was a surround sound speaker. It can beat up as shit in a box. I ordered another of the same speaker off eBay, came in pristine condition.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xg15 9y ago
That explanation doesn't make sense in the current case though. I'd imagine, the usual difficulty in blocking counterfeits is telling them apart from the real product - which you do want people to sell. However, if you already make a point of blocking the real product, shouldn't blocking counterfeits be even easier? (I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)
amelius 9y ago
It would help if vendors used serial registration. And perhaps they could include some signature item in the package that is difficult to copy. Electronic products would be perfect to hold a signature.
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  Might this be a legit use case for a blockhain solution?
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    No. The source of truth is the manufacturer, so you don't need a "trustless" solution. You trust the manufacturer.
    - fnordsensei 9y ago
      I wouldn't trust that they are who they say they are unless they can prove it. Also I don't trust anyone between them and me, including Amazon. If they signed products with a cryptographic key, might actually be worth something as proof of who they are.
      - kalleboo 9y ago
        Sure, but that's just regular old cryptographic signatures + a web of trust. A blockchain doesn't help at all to prove who someone is.
  - tomrod 9y ago
    Eh, what would a decentralized ledger hosted by multiple parties bring to the table here? Trying to see your reasoning on invoking blockchain.
    - alanfalcon 9y ago
      An idle thought perhaps not well thought out. But I was envisioning more than the simple Manufacturer to Amazon handoff, something like a new type of individual-item-specific UPC where you could continue to track ownership even through hip-to-the-system OfferUp style apps. The privacy implications are scary, and I'm not suggesting there's a viable or good idea in here. Thus it was a question. :-)
_asummers 9y ago
I worry about when Amazon starts offering medicine, more than anything else. Fake drugs can and will kill people.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  For prescription drugs, no way will they co-mingle third party sellers. It's reasonable to expect that they won't even allow other pharmacies on the platform.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  They already sell things that could get people killed. There are horror stories of children getting lead poisoning from Amazon toys.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Amazon already sells OTC drugs, including allowing third party sellers. Fake OTC drugs are almost as dangerous as fake prescription drugs (fake prescription drugs are more likely to be dangerous just by not being a good drug, but either is equally dangerous as a bad drug.)
Pxtl 9y ago
It's not like they seem to be facing any consequences for selling shoddy or even dangerous goods.
- zdragnar 9y ago
  They've actually been proactive in removing items that are reported as dangerous. I had my eye on a juicer, but a review had posted that they noticed some plastic shavings showing up in their juice. The next day, the product was listed as no longer available. N=1, but there does seem to be an effort.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    That's reactive, not proactive.
- brazzledazzle 9y ago
  I used to only have a policy against ordering food items from amazon but after I ordered a couple bottles of Neutrogena face wash (standard stuff we've always used) and it made several people in my family break out immediately after using it I won't order any soaps or toiletry products either. If Amazon could guarantee there was no comingling I'd pay extra for some things for it.
emn13 9y ago
So: amazon manages a fairly... unmanaged marketplace. There's a lot of cruft and some fraud. I get the impression it's not quite as bad here (amazon.de) as the reports make amazon.com sound, but deception is a huge problem; and quality in general is variable. But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing). All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.
- 3pt14159 9y ago
  The way Amazon handles disputes and poor quality goods is beyond frustrating. I bought a security camera with a motion sensor that was supposed to text me if there was movement (I was traveling through some less savoury countries and wanted to know if anyone was checking through my room) and the thing broke in the first day or two. Of course the buyer refunds me a token dollar and Amazon's refute process somehow doesn't work. My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
  - kpil 9y ago
    I've stopped buing books aswell. If only Netflix could buy over Jeremy Clarkson then all would be well.
  - _emacsomancer_ 9y ago
    Oddly enough, I've found that I can usually find better deals on books from other sites. And the one time when I needed a book to arrive quickly and so had planned to buy from Amazon (to get fast shipping), they didn't have the book in stock.
ryanlol 9y ago
I tried to sell shoes on Amazon and they definitely demanded loads of documents from me before allowing me to do so. Perhaps Google hasn’t registered their products with Amazon? It could even be intentional on their part.
mikehollinger 9y ago
Fundamentally, it reminds me of eBay without the feedback score. I (and probably many of you) know / knew that when buying from eBay, the seller is really some person in Milwaukee, or a warehouse in New Jersey. I checked feedback ratings, history, and so on for each purchase. My mother knows this too. In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!” IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.” When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”
- JohnTHaller 9y ago
  The problem on Amazon is that it doesn't matter which vendor you buy from. If it's Amazon or 'fulfilled by Amazon', all the goods are intermingled. It's like going to the bazaar and paying your money to the trustworthy vendor but when it's time to get your item, a dog goes and grabs your item from any random vendor he sees that looks like the thing you bought.
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    You can request your products not be commingled, but by default, they are.
    - mynameisvlad 9y ago
      You should make it clear that this is on the merchant's side. Consumers are not allowed to choose where their purchases come from.
      - mikehollinger 9y ago
        So interestingly - I’m an amazon shopper who’s unhappy occasionally. Where to I flee to? I want to buy a new cutting board. Where do I go? AliExpress? Walmart?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pacala 9y ago
Just buy an Alexa / GoogleHome / Nest / SamsungSmartTV and wave your privacy goodbye. It's a free-for-all out there for invading your privacy, and the big players are in the lead. No need for obscure knockoffs.

macspoofing 9y ago

>Amazon has a major issue with screening against knockoffs and counterfeits Does it ever! I refuse to buy expensive electronics or equipment on Amazon after getting burned with a knockoff Bose headphones and SWISSGEAR luggage. You don't even get the benefit of cheap prices as those things were within reasonable range of their typical retail price (and with luggage the price fluctuation is always high). It's insane.

0x0 9y ago
Apparently you can even be denied Global Entry for buying from Amazon: https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits-global-entry-customs https://www.racked.com/2018/1/8/16849298/amazon-counterfeits...
- PebblesHD 9y ago
  That was a very interesting read, with a few points about sharing of listings pages I hadn’t previously considered, thanks for posting it! The main point though, around being flagged for importing counterfeits is particularly concerning to me as a frequent traveller...
  - mynameisvlad 9y ago
    I'm sure they're allowed to do this since the membership agreement is incredibly strict and allows for no room for mistakes, but that doesn't mean they should be. Generally speaking, laws take into account intent and treat cases differently (or not at all) based on what the intent of the action is. It's pretty clear here that the person didn't intend to import a counterfeit bag (why pay full price for it?)
sdiepend 9y ago
How did you see it was a knockoff? What gave it away, just curious.
- macspoofing 9y ago
  For the Bose headphones, I went online and found some guides that pointed out things to look for. For the SWISSGEAR luggage, I went to a retail location and inspected the same model ... also, couldn't register the serial number. Both knockoffs were of pretty good quality, but not at the same level as the originals.
oxymoran 9y ago
Don’t buy name brands from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Pretty simple. Purchasing on amazon isn’t about getting a “deal”, it’s about getting something at or around retail price without having to go to the store. If you are looking for cheap name brand items, go to TJMax or something.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Amazon comingles goods in their warehouses between themselves and various sellers. You can buy something sold "by Amazon" and get sent an item sent to Amazon by a third party seller.
  - oxymoran 9y ago
    Right, meaning fulfilled by Amazon. But they have the brand registry indicating that something is “of a brand”. So you are saying that these products can be counterfeits? The item from the post says it’s “by wish power” not google(the logo is certainly alarming though). It’s a knockoff sure, but a pretty obvious one. I order everything from Amazon and I have never ever had a single problem with that. I am a pretty diligent shopper so maybe that helps?
    - taylorexpander 9y ago
      Right, so when you buy things from Amazon you have several options: 1. Items sold by Amazon. 2. Items sold by 3rd parties and fulfilled by Amazon. 3. Items sold by 3rd parties and shipped by 3rd parties. The problem is that items in their fulfillment centers, (1) and (2) are mixed together. Just because you buy something sold by Amazon doesn’t guarantee that you won’t be sent a counterfeit item that a 3rd party sent to amazon to use for fulfillment.
      - partisan 9y ago
        Is there a source confirming this?
baldfat 9y ago
I use to buy my electronic from specialty shops. Cameras from B&H and audio from Sweetwater. I switched because my purchases were less frequent and as much. My day to day work is education and I do side work and small videos for work. I know that B&H has had problems with ethical treatment of their workers and were fined $3.4 million by the labor department. One I heard things have been corrected and that things are different there but they actually were the only place I could go to get everything I needed. If you make a Purchase Order you don't want to fill out multiple of ones from new vendors. Fast forward to last week I was given a budget of about $6,000 to purchase company equipment and I looked at Amazon for 2 minutes and went right to B&H. After I submitted my order to my company I looked up everything on Amazon to see what I was missing. Well everything was bundles or weird price ranges with only 1 or 2 items left for sale. After 45 minutes I realized that it was a mess and I couldn't come up with a clear answer of how much anything was going to cost unless I had a credit card (We do purchase orders) and just looking things up it was a whole $50 less. Glad I went to a single seller.
Shivetya 9y ago
well one issue is that the counterfeit gear is pushing out legit items. it is a bizarre day when I resort to buying from Ebay sellers to get what I want. now I have not see the issue in food products, I tend to buy certain condiments and garnish type items via Amazon as they are not locally available but given time and Amazon's looking the other way with the marketplace I expect it
AJ007 9y ago
The last expensive electronic item I got from amazon was a surround sound speaker. It can beat up as shit in a box. I ordered another of the same speaker off eBay, came in pristine condition.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

xg15 9y ago

That explanation doesn't make sense in the current case though. I'd imagine, the usual difficulty in blocking counterfeits is telling them apart from the real product - which you do want people to sell. However, if you already make a point of blocking the real product, shouldn't blocking counterfeits be even easier? (I could imagine you still have problems with products that just "happen" to look almost - but not quite - like the original, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link shows products that look exactly like a Chromecast, even though the actual Chromecast is blocked.)

amelius 9y ago

It would help if vendors used serial registration. And perhaps they could include some signature item in the package that is difficult to copy. Electronic products would be perfect to hold a signature.

alanfalcon 9y ago
Might this be a legit use case for a blockhain solution?
- kalleboo 9y ago
  No. The source of truth is the manufacturer, so you don't need a "trustless" solution. You trust the manufacturer.
  - fnordsensei 9y ago
    I wouldn't trust that they are who they say they are unless they can prove it. Also I don't trust anyone between them and me, including Amazon. If they signed products with a cryptographic key, might actually be worth something as proof of who they are.
    - kalleboo 9y ago
      Sure, but that's just regular old cryptographic signatures + a web of trust. A blockchain doesn't help at all to prove who someone is.
- tomrod 9y ago
  Eh, what would a decentralized ledger hosted by multiple parties bring to the table here? Trying to see your reasoning on invoking blockchain.
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    An idle thought perhaps not well thought out. But I was envisioning more than the simple Manufacturer to Amazon handoff, something like a new type of individual-item-specific UPC where you could continue to track ownership even through hip-to-the-system OfferUp style apps. The privacy implications are scary, and I'm not suggesting there's a viable or good idea in here. Thus it was a question. :-)

_asummers 9y ago

I worry about when Amazon starts offering medicine, more than anything else. Fake drugs can and will kill people.

maxerickson 9y ago
For prescription drugs, no way will they co-mingle third party sellers. It's reasonable to expect that they won't even allow other pharmacies on the platform.
Pxtl 9y ago
They already sell things that could get people killed. There are horror stories of children getting lead poisoning from Amazon toys.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Amazon already sells OTC drugs, including allowing third party sellers. Fake OTC drugs are almost as dangerous as fake prescription drugs (fake prescription drugs are more likely to be dangerous just by not being a good drug, but either is equally dangerous as a bad drug.)

Pxtl 9y ago

It's not like they seem to be facing any consequences for selling shoddy or even dangerous goods.

zdragnar 9y ago
They've actually been proactive in removing items that are reported as dangerous. I had my eye on a juicer, but a review had posted that they noticed some plastic shavings showing up in their juice. The next day, the product was listed as no longer available. N=1, but there does seem to be an effort.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  That's reactive, not proactive.
brazzledazzle 9y ago
I used to only have a policy against ordering food items from amazon but after I ordered a couple bottles of Neutrogena face wash (standard stuff we've always used) and it made several people in my family break out immediately after using it I won't order any soaps or toiletry products either. If Amazon could guarantee there was no comingling I'd pay extra for some things for it.

emn13 9y ago

So: amazon manages a fairly... unmanaged marketplace. There's a lot of cruft and some fraud. I get the impression it's not quite as bad here (amazon.de) as the reports make amazon.com sound, but deception is a huge problem; and quality in general is variable. But having said all that - this is such a poor example to start complaining about. Nothing in the product description sounds like a counterfeit; it's simply yet-another possibly poor-quality competitor to the chrome cast. And sure, the supplier made the really dubious decision to include a chrome-logo-shape in the actual device. But the seller isn't amazon; and the description doesn't use anything to hint at it being a chromecast - so it's unlikely people looking for a chromecast will be mislead (or indeed even manage to find this thing). All in all: this sounds like the seller is possibly counterfeiting, but it's not a great example of amazon tolerating counterfeiting, because it's easy to imagine a reasonable middleman might never have noticed.

3pt14159 9y ago
The way Amazon handles disputes and poor quality goods is beyond frustrating. I bought a security camera with a motion sensor that was supposed to text me if there was movement (I was traveling through some less savoury countries and wanted to know if anyone was checking through my room) and the thing broke in the first day or two. Of course the buyer refunds me a token dollar and Amazon's refute process somehow doesn't work. My new strategy with Amazon is simple: If it's a book, sure. Otherwise no way, I can't trust anything there. I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit against them by now for all the counterfeit / poor quality goods / spyware.
- kpil 9y ago
  I've stopped buing books aswell. If only Netflix could buy over Jeremy Clarkson then all would be well.
- _emacsomancer_ 9y ago
  Oddly enough, I've found that I can usually find better deals on books from other sites. And the one time when I needed a book to arrive quickly and so had planned to buy from Amazon (to get fast shipping), they didn't have the book in stock.

ryanlol 9y ago

I tried to sell shoes on Amazon and they definitely demanded loads of documents from me before allowing me to do so. Perhaps Google hasn’t registered their products with Amazon? It could even be intentional on their part.

mikehollinger 9y ago

Fundamentally, it reminds me of eBay without the feedback score. I (and probably many of you) know / knew that when buying from eBay, the seller is really some person in Milwaukee, or a warehouse in New Jersey. I checked feedback ratings, history, and so on for each purchase. My mother knows this too. In Amazon, I know to try to do this, but I don’t quite trust that what I bought came from who it claims to be. My mother has no concept of a “third party seller.” She just knows “it’s on Prime!” IMHO the Amazon user experience tries to explicitly bury the 3rd party “bazaar” inside the “store,” and (some time ago) successfully managed to mingle them both into a single “marketplace.” When I’m shopping for a 1978 printing of a book, I want the bazaar. When I’m shopping for a Chromecast, I want a “store.”

JohnTHaller 9y ago
The problem on Amazon is that it doesn't matter which vendor you buy from. If it's Amazon or 'fulfilled by Amazon', all the goods are intermingled. It's like going to the bazaar and paying your money to the trustworthy vendor but when it's time to get your item, a dog goes and grabs your item from any random vendor he sees that looks like the thing you bought.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  You can request your products not be commingled, but by default, they are.
  - mynameisvlad 9y ago
    You should make it clear that this is on the merchant's side. Consumers are not allowed to choose where their purchases come from.
    - mikehollinger 9y ago
      So interestingly - I’m an amazon shopper who’s unhappy occasionally. Where to I flee to? I want to buy a new cutting board. Where do I go? AliExpress? Walmart?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pacala 9y ago

Just buy an Alexa / GoogleHome / Nest / SamsungSmartTV and wave your privacy goodbye. It's a free-for-all out there for invading your privacy, and the big players are in the lead. No need for obscure knockoffs.