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A free tool to quickly detect counterfeit flash (2017)
- popol12 2y agoJust received 2 cheapo 64GB micro sd cards from aliexpress, they seemed legit, had tons of reviews with OK crystaldisk performance screenshots and... they're junk This tool quickly identified that they were counterfeit of type "Limbo", with 16GB of capacity instead of 64GB. Thanks to Michel Machado for writing this gem.
- tombert 2y agoA part of me will see stuff like "3TB Flash Drive" on AliExpress for $3 and briefly consider buying it. Like, I know it's obviously not true, it's obviously a lie, but I also am curious about what I would actually get. I never do it because I don't really see the point of paying money for something that will immediately go into a landfill, but it's always tempting.
- bombcar 2y agoBack when it was being done with external hard drives there were YouTube channels dedicated to breaking them open and experimenting with how they did it. Fun stuff to watch on a boring afternoon.
- jayrot 2y agoThe potpourri of a youtube channel, Atomic Shrimp, has done a couple interesting videos doing just that.
- pogue 2y agoHis channel is where I first heard of this scam. https://youtube.com/watch?v=UsWx1iO-aeA https://youtube.com/watch?v=UsWx1iO-aeA
- megous 2y agoFor consumer stuff like this, you'll obviously get something else. But sometimes you can get recycled components if the price obviously is not sane, where recycling is an option. It's only fraud if the description mentions new and original. :)
- tombert 2y agoMy trick to get decently priced computer equipment is to buy used stuff from data centers; generally that stuff will sell for pennies because their goal is to "get rid of it", not "get rid of it for a profit". Desktop network cards and switches are almost always available for very little (sometimes literally just $1 + shipping).
- SoftTalker 2y agoLook at govdeals.com for stuff from universities, they seem to sell a lot of their surplus hardware there.
- tombert 2y agoGovdeals is sort of addictive. I've only bought stuff on there a few times, but it's fun to look around and see stuff like "pallet of 400 laptops" selling for $600.
- callalex 2y agoHow do you find such things? In person or online somewhere?
- tombert 2y agoSibling comment mentioned Govdeals, which is a place I'll look sometimes if I can find something near me or they're willing to ship. You can look on Craigslist as well, especially if you live in a large metro area (I live in NYC so it's easy to find lots of corporate surplus). Companies will often need to upgrade all their infra and liquidate their equipment. My printer is a giant nearly 20 year old HP office thing that I got for $30 + $100 for the Uber back home from an office that did a full IT renewal.
- axiolite 2y agoA few sellers on eBay are honest Description: This item is upgraded by 32 GB Pen Flash Drive to 2TB 32GB-2TB, the actual capacity is 32G, the computer displays 2TB, the detection is also 2TB, more than 32G things can be stored, but not displayed. https://www.ebay.com/itm/234810575961 That's not bad. Most counterfeits I get are just 2GB so hardly useful. Still, the counterfeit firmware makes compatibility issues more likely, so better to buy one without the counterfeiting.
- p51-remorse 2y agoIs there any reason I would deliberately purchase one of these over a standard 32GB drive? Trying to think of if there’s a case where I would want to trick some hardware into thinking it has a 2TB drive when it really doesn’t?
- floam 2y agobtrfs unable to accommodate further writes but not logically full, needs more space to start deleting stuff. YOLO
- dns_snek 2y ago> more than 32G things can be stored, but not displayed. That's certainly an interesting way to phrase it. I use /dev/null for a similar purpose with the added benefit that it can store petabytes of data, but sadly we don't have the technology to display it yet.
- betagammaxyz 2y agoLol. That's up there with the [1-bit Bloom filter](https://www.xkcd.com/2934/ https://www.xkcd.com/2934/)
- KomoD 2y agoBut why would anyone want a fake 2TB though? Surely they write this to cover their ass when people don't read the entire listing.
- gosub100 2y agoI did this on Amazon knowing it was a scam and immediately returned it just to drive up their numbers and hopefully get them shut down faster. I have no idea if that did any good, but what disappointed me was Amazon only gave me credit, not a full refund.
- megous 2y agoYeah, aliexpress returns real money.
- mavamaarten 2y agoAnd there's honest stuff on there too, loads of it actually. I bought a 128GB SSD from there many years ago for $10. I expected nothing but like you say, I was curious about what I'd get and something faster than a shitty USB stick with decent storage capacity was all I was after. I verified it, and it works perfectly and it's 128GB as described, it just lacks cache so it bogs down on super large files. But for $10 I couldn't buy a better USB stick.
- userbinator 2y agoThey may have true capacity but long-term retention is yet to be established: https://htwingnut.com/2022/09/11/ssd-as-long-term-storage-testing/ https://htwingnut.com/2022/09/11/ssd-as-long-term-storage-te... There's even SLC USB drives being advertised, an otherwise extremely overpriced item these days, with sellers posting the exact part numbers and pictures of the insides as evidence. Those may be using recycled flash.
- tombert 2y agoA few years ago Micro Center had a coupon for a free 120gb SSD, which I guess worked because I ended up going there and buying stuff in order to redeem it. The SSD wasn't great, it was pretty slow, but it did work, and I have used it in conjunction with a USB SATA adapter as something where I can write lots and lots of tiny files for projects I work on [1], and where I don't particularly care if I break it. Surprisingly, it's still holding up...pretty good for free! [1] One project I've done involves breaking up video files into a picture of every frame, then do some kind of image processing, write the new files, and then glue them back together, which means there can be a ton of writes on there that I don't want to be done on the expensive and irreplaceable internal SSD on my Mac.
- userbinator 2y agohttps://www.trendforce.com/price/flash https://www.trendforce.com/price/flash TLC flash is currently less than $0.10/GB. $3 will probably get you a 32GB drive with flash of dubious quality.
- onemoresoop 2y agoThis tool could save you from corrupting data but once you buy these counterfeit cards you're better off trashing them than requesting a refund, shipping will cost you more that the drive itself.
- globalise83 2y agoChargeback - goods not as described. No need to return them.
- dylan604 2y agoSupposedly, card processors are meant to suspend accounts when they get too many chargebacks. How is that number determined? If it's a percentage of total charges, then places like Amazon/Ali* will have so many other charges these will pretty much round to zero. Also, these vendors are "too big to suspend", so chargebacks will do nothing like what they are meant to.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoWhat do you mean they don’t do what they’re supposed to? They get you your money back. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Dropping the merchant is a bonus.
- dylan604 2y agoThe chargeback is meant as last resort though when a company is not cooperating. The company has already been refunding without having to do a chargeback. The chargeback is meant to let the processor know that their customer isn't holding up their end of the agreement.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoYou're correct that it's a last resort, but its primary role is to, literally, charge back to the original merchant. "[letting] the processor know that their customer isn't holding up to their end of the agreement" is a side benefit. As is eventually dropping the merchant when there are too many chargebacks to justify supporting them. > Through a chargeback, your bank can try to get your money back from the seller on your behalf it isn’t a legal right, but your bank is committed to helping you, and will treat any claim fairly. https://www.visa.co.uk/how-you-pay-matters/chargeback-purchase-disputes.html https://www.visa.co.uk/how-you-pay-matters/chargeback-purcha... > When a customer disputes a debit or credit card transaction, the card issuer must determine whether to provide that cardholder with a refund for the transaction amount—also known as a chargeback. https://b2b.mastercard.com/news-and-insights/blog/what-is-a-chargeback/ https://b2b.mastercard.com/news-and-insights/blog/what-is-a-... > A chargeback is a rules-based mechanism, with time-sensitive workflows, that enables the issuer and the acquirer to determine the financial liability of a disputed transaction. https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/na/global-site/documents/chargebacks-made-simple-guide.pdf https://www.mastercard.us/content/dam/public/mastercardcom/n... > A chargeback occurs when, after investigation of the dispute, we debit your account for the amount of the disputed transaction and credit the Card Member with this amount. https://www.americanexpress.com/au/merchant/chargebacks-and-fraud0.html https://www.americanexpress.com/au/merchant/chargebacks-and-... Notice none of them talk about it being a feedback mechanism. Because it's not. It's a refund mechanism used as a last resort.
- ableal 2y ago> had tons of reviews with OK crystaldisk performance screenshots Select the 1-star reviews. Usually someone helpfully posts proof of the scam.
- gosub100 2y agoUntil a new scammer runs a protection racket offering to withhold the scam accusation for a price.
- toast0 2y agoI've bought a couple things from Aliexpress, and payment processing is such a hassle[1], I don't know why you would use it to buy things that are easily found from domestic sources? Especially SD cards which are widely counterfeited. [1] This was a couple years ago, maybe things got streamlined? Of my cards that don't have a foreign transaction fee, Aliexpress wants the phone number off the back of one, which is sketchy; no thanks. The second one, charges don't go through, and the issuer customer service can't even see the attempts; I have to ask them to disable security on my card for ~ 30 minutes, and then the charges go through. Billing showed from England, IIRC. Doesn't (edit: Didn't! thanks) support any intermediates I do (paypal/amazon pay) which is usually my goto for low trust transactions.
- gambiting 2y agoThey do support PayPal nowadays. Paying on AliExpress is as easy as on Amazon, and a lot of things do have a 5 day delivery guarantee and it does actually work. I've been using it quite a lot personally(I'm in the UK).
- akvadrako 2y agoThat sounds like issues with your bank, not AliExpress. I entered my card number with them years ago and it just works. What I hate is their login and search - both horribly broken. But as to why, it's a better selection than Amazon for many things (for example components) and usually cheaper.
- KomoD 2y agoWow, they scam for that little of a price difference? 64GB costs almost nothing...
- Zancarius 2y agoYeah, really... I picked up a 128GiB card from the store on something of a whim a while back, and I'm not even sure I paid more than about $18USD (with tax) for it. I bet I could have gotten it cheaper, but I was impatient.
- pogue 2y agoA helpful tool I recommend for buying from common outlets online is Fakespot [1]. It scans the reviews and looks for suspicious/fake reviews & other telltale signs of deceit. Mozilla recently acquired it, but you can scan Amazon URLs on their website, and they have a very helpful browser addon. There was a similar tool I used to double check called ReviewMeta, but they seem to be offline. It's not a 100% foolproof way to determine if a vendor or product is fake, but it is helpful. There are some other things you can do to double check things as well. [2] [1] https://www.fakespot.com/ https://www.fakespot.com/ [2] https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-fake-reviews-amazon/ https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-spot-fake-reviews-amazon/
- declan_roberts 2y agoEvery single product on Amazon has a fake spot of like D these days. They flooded the field.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zkirill 2y agoDoes anyone have any experience with mass testing flash drives as part of an assembly line? Another tool for testing flash drives that was recommended to me was H2testW.
- haswell 2y agoFor anyone looking for tools that do this, it seems like a good opportunity to mention Steve Gibson’s Validrive tool [0] if anyone out there is trying to help family and friends who might be scared off by a CLI tool, and I believe it’s non-destructive. I’m glad to see more awareness of this issue and entrants into the space. - https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm
- jayrot 2y agoIt warms my heart to see that Steve's website appears frozen in time (and works just fine). I bought Spinrite nearly two decades ago and it saved my bacon more than once. Also loved to listen to him and Leo on Security Now in the very early days of podcasts ("netcasts" lol).
- haswell 2y agoSecurity Now is still going strong and I listen weekly! And Steve recently committed to continuing past 1000 episodes (he was previously planning to wind things down). He’s continuing to do awesome work and I deeply appreciate him for it.
- cirrus3 2y agoSteve is an interesting guy and while his website and software development methods are downright ancient, I would trust his programs over almost any other vendor. SpinRite has saved me also. I'd encourage anyone who isn't familiar with him to check out the Security Now podcast. I have been listening since 2005.
- neallindsay 2y agoI was surprised that when he bought 20 cheap "1 or 2 terrabyte" thumb drives, all of them were frauds. This was on Amazon just this past September.
- dylan604 2y agoReally? You were surprised? Something too good to be true actually turned out not to be true? From Amazon no less? I'm guessing you forgot the /s at the end of your comment
- bheadmaster 2y agoI bought a (little too) cheap large SSD off the internet. It was surprisingly slow, but it seemed to work fine, so I assumed that's the reason for the low price - until I tried to backup my other SSD on it. After the first ~50 GiB, all the writes suddenly failed and I could only perform reads. After re-formatting it and attempting the backup a few more times, I was frustrated, so I searched the internet for related problems and found out about these so-called "chinese scam drives" that announce size to the drivers that is much larger than actual, and just throw away any writes above some memory address. I quickly found f3 and tested it - and sure enough, it was a chinese scam drive. I reported the seller to the local inspection and they confiscated all the other drives and gave them a huge fine. I feel pretty smug about it.
- dooglius 2y agoWhat do you mean by "the local inspection"? The police?
- Almondsetat 2y agothe SSDPD
- bheadmaster 2y agoI suppose the US equivalent would be the FTC (assuming they can confiscate and fine?).
- efilife 2y agoThis website traps me on mobile, can't use the back button. Fennec on android
- axiolite 2y agoWorks perfectly fine for me. v125.3.0 with uBlock.
- calebio 2y agoI can't be the only one who read the title and thought this was about detecting a counterfeit Flash player.
- SoftTalker 2y agoThere's no need for this. Buy name-brand storage from reputable sellers. Of course the fantastically cheap stuff on Alibaba is fake. You don't even have to check.
- John23832 2y agoI don't have a link, but I thought I saw that this was happening with name brand drives from third party sellers on Amazon as well. And given that Amazon co-mingles product, it's a crapshoot.
- radicality 2y agoDont even think about buying flash on Amazon. Use a reputable store like B&H, Digikey, Mouser.
- SoftTalker 2y agoYes, this. Or just buy it in person at someplace like Target or WalMart (and not at a "dollar" store). Amazon cannot be trusted.
- giobox 2y agoThis is generally good advice, but the sophistication over the years of some of the fake Sandisk stuff as one example has meant at times even seemingly sound storefronts have become polluted with fakes. I imagine all sorts of random commingling type activities have happened in Amazon warehouses over the years, there is so many avenues for convincing fake crap to accidentally get sold in mainstream sales channels.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoreputable does not mean amazon. they hide random sellers on some products and lie they are from the oem on the product page. half of premium kingston models I got from the did not fall under the obvious and amateur scam this tool detects... but were lower quality chips or outright QA failed units. that half always fails around the 3x capacity writes. so infuriating.
- kristopolous 2y ago2011, I bought a counterfeit Kingston card over Amazon. At the time this was not cheap https://i.imgur.com/4XeaX.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/4XeaX.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/FZEYA.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/FZEYA.jpeg I tried to fill in a warranty claim when I ran into problems. No dice. I always make sure the seller is quasi official now.
- pogue 2y agoHow do you check the sellers validity?
- kristopolous 2y agoAt least on Amazon and eBay, I'll buy from the user whose name matches the brand. Of course if it's "brand"-usa or something iterative you should check. When this happened to me 13 years ago it was kind of different. Amazon didn't offer returns on memory products and the vendor display name was a non unique settable string, different from their URL stub corresponding to their username. Amazon gave me their condolences after I forwarded them the conversation from Kingston's warranty department exposing the fraud but not my money back. They've gotten better on all these fronts. Additionally they used to be flooded with lookalike frauds in memory up until a few years ago. You'd have the mysterious Sannsung or SamDisk products. They've cracked down on that too. And lastly there are other major etailers that don't do this third party retail stuff
- ehPReth 2y agosadly with commingling you can't even trust sold/shipped by i don't think :/
- bagels 2y agoThis tool has a function to "correct" the capacity. I can't understand why that would be useful, I would not trust a device like this at all for any purpose.
- JeffeFawkes 2y agoI picked up a handful of "580gb" microSD cards off AliExpress recently, with the goal of using them in mp3 players around the house. I figured they'd be reject 64gb sdcards, and I was right - they averaged 50-58gb of usable storage. Perfect for writing once, reading many times, and cheaper than even 16gb legit cards. They can be useful, just know they may also die at any moment.
- KolenCh 2y agoI got a few new USB drives at work for testing data centre hardwares. I normally would run f3 on new flash drives but this time the deadline is so rushed so I skipped that. Then I wasted an hour diagnosing a mysterious problem, and eventually I found out the usb drive is faulty after testing it using f3. I then tested all of them and found out 4 out of 8 of them aren’t faulty, some of them died and disappeared. So test your hardwares, test your hardwares that’s used to test hardwares. You will never know you can trust them unless proven. Edit: badblocks, SMART test, memtest86 and memtest86+, prime95, Intel burn test, OCCT, iperf3, etc are equally useful.
- Animats 2y agoHas someone made a flash drive tester as a standalone hand-held device? That would be useful for buyers and incoming inspection. Haven't found one yet.
- anitil 2y agoThat's not a bad idea! It wouldn't be too hard to set this up with a raspberry pi as a prototype
- aussieguy1234 2y agoOnce got a cheap "Sandisk" SD card from an Australian ebay seller, which had much less capacity than what was displayed when it was plugged in. After I tried to store more and ran into issues, I did some investigation and found out that it was a counterfeit Sandisk. I emailed a screenshot with proof to the seller. Because of the very good consumer protection laws we have here, I got my money back.
- dspillett 2y ago> Because of the very good consumer protection laws we have here, I got my money back. Sometimes a scammer will give money back easily just to avoid a negative review, irrespective of local consumer protections or lack thereof, if they have currently managed to maintain a good rep (via exchanging good reviews with buyers who haven't tested the item yet, or have passed it on as a present and never will test it, from fake reviews, managing to get negative reviews cancelled the harder way, and other trickery).
- aussieguy1234 2y agoI believe this was so long ago that reviews themselves weren't very widespread (or at least not for individual products. The seller had good ratings).
- ogurechny 2y agoMany comments assume (quite naively) that Big Marketplaces have no idea that it happens, and are fooled by shrewd counterfeit sellers who are always one step ahead. I suppose it is a complete fantasy, and those marketplaces have precise analytics on how big is the market of selling crap to illiterate consumers. If they voluntary abstain from that, and ban swiftly, they'd simply let competitors feast on that crowd, which would be bad for business™. Therefore, the handling of negative reviews, refunds, and fraud detection will always leave just enough margin for cheap counterfeits to be sold. As long as they both profit, it's a controlled dumpster fire.
- cirrus3 2y agoSteve Gibson of GRC (SpinRite, Security Now podcast, etc) made a free Windows tool specifically for this called ValiDrive: https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm https://www.grc.com/validrive.htm If you are a Windows user, ValiDrive seems like the much easier choice.
- notorandit 2y agoThe tool brings a huge problem. You need to buy one to know it is fake, thus making the counterfeiter efforts successful. Bad product reviews on the sales site won't work as they can be easily circumvented if not removed. Bad product reviews on 3rd party web site won't be effective as well. I think the right tool is a website to show updated buck/TB prices. So we can avoid buying fake devices. The proem is how/who would keep those data up to date. And how to make that site a popular choice for buyers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hakfoo 2y agoI sort of wish there were places that sold new 2Gb drives as honest 2Gb drives rather than pretending they're 512TB. There are plenty of use cases (i. e. for a Gotek/Flashfloppy setup where 2Gb would hold more software than ever existed for the host machine, or as a cheap item you don't need to ask for back when you loan it to someone). It's great that I can spend 10 bucks and get a competent 32Gb drive, but if we could get around $1, we could treat them as semi-disposable as floppies were.