The fake FT232RL device in this article is actually a lot better than some of the devices on the market now. I bought an FT232RL breakout on eBay a year or so

The fake FT232RL device in this article is actually a lot better than some of the devices on the market now. I bought an FT232RL breakout on eBay a year or so back, planning to use it in bit bang mode, and it turned out that while it worked for talking to UARTs, the bit bang mode was completely broken - and the EEPROM (needed to configure it the way I wanted it) was not even writable at all (probably not real EEPROM). In my case, it was a counterfeit - the product was explicitly advertised as FTDI FT232 but wasn't. I was fortunately able to get a refund for it through eBay. Sadly it is very hard to know what you are actually getting due to the prevalence of identically branded clones, and beyond refunding me eBay doesn't seem to have done much despite me pointing out that these devices are being advertised as FTDI FT232 but are actually significantly below the advertised specs. As discussed elsewhere here, FTDI pushed an update that deliberately tries to brick FT232 clones by writing bad data to their EEPROM - which obviously non-configurable devices would be immune from and might be one reason (alongside cost) which the people creating clones have cut out the real EEPROM now. I agree with those here the bricking was a very bad idea - not all clone chips were necessarily even counterfeits (it bricks based on PID / VID, and can't see what is actually written on the face of the chip; reusing a USB PID/VID registered by someone else to enable compatibility without using another company's trademark isn't counterfeiting). Given they deliberately destroyed other people's property because it contains a chip that might not even be counterfeit deeply embedded in it by the manufacturer, I think they are lucky not to have faced any lawsuits or prosecution.