Escalation In False Capacity USB Fake Memory eBay! SOSFakeFlash News July 3rd, 2009
Posted by KittyFireFlash on July 3, 2009
Warning to all eBayer members. There is a serious escalation in fake flash usb drives being offered by eBay sellers in the Orient.
SOSFakeFlash with your assistance managed to have many sellers suspended. Their sentence in eBay fake flash prison ended, they are back with a vengeance.
New seller id’s have appeared. Old sellers, having recently been shut down are using their stock of id’s prepared long in advance.
Everywhere we turn, we are finding new sellers. The objective of the fraudsters is simply this, Hit and Run. Massive listings over a very short period of time. Typical preparation is to sell cheap items for less than $1 us or £1. Often it is a stylus, earphones or an MP Player sock. They will sell these to build positive feedback and also to compensate for any negative feedback from frauded buyers. This strategy is used by small sellers and powersellers. The game of numbers.
We need your help! There are just too many of them. The major target is 16GB capacity. The period they will list has decreased. It can be as short as 5 days, with massive volume or 3 days on followed by 3 days off. We need you to patrol your eBay country regions. Look for suspect usb flash drives in 16GB. Please leave your comments and reports on this post to assist us. How can you make a difference?
Alerts will resume soon. There is a lot of investigative work involved. This site does not make idle claims.
It is easy to spot 16GB fakes. It is not possible to offer genuine usb flash drives at $20 US or less, if the seller wishes to make a profit. $20 US is the rock bottom price for an 8GB flash drive, quality possibly only at grade B. You can read up on usb flash drive chip prices at: http://flashdrivefacts.wordpress.com/
see What Are The Real Costs For Flash Chips In China? Guide 2009
We are announcing zero tolerance. Only 1 single confirmation is needed for an eBay seller to be put on the eBay fake flash sellers list. The escalation and the fact that eBay will not introduce a policy on the selling of Flash based technology requires a more aggressive approach. After 18 months of experience, we know that it only takes one. Data supports this over and over again. Only about 1 in 10,000 false capacity devices is reported. Does this shock you? The only way the number of victims can be reduced is by early detection. Fraudsters need to be shut down quickly before they can accumulate false positive feedback from buyers who do not test properly. Otherwise they are able to build a feedback wall that protects them and allows them to continue with their fraud.
Can you help patrol? If you did not like being frauded on eBay, this is your opportunity to do something positive:
1. Look for any usb flash drive 16GB capacity listings on your eBay home site. Fraudsters target different countries at different times. They rotate eBay regions. For example, a seller may not show up on ebay.com but will in the UK or in Europe exclusively. A few weeks later they will switch and if frauded buyers check in their area they will think the seller has stopped – not so. If the items are below $25 US report the seller id’s on this post to assist us to examine them.
2. If you see any seller offering “free shipping” and a low bid price, report on this post.
3. Select 16GB listings at low prices. Write to the seller and ask if they can guarantee the advertised capacity. Corner them. Did they test with H2testw? If they refuse to answer your question, report here, we know that when a seller refused to respond there was only one outcome, they eventually appeared on the list!
4. If any seller offers listings with “Buyer Id Kept Private ” – this is a 99.9999% sign of a fake flash seller. Please do the following:
a) Report here.
b) Ask the seller why they are using a private auction. Send any communications to sosfakeflashdrive@gmail.com or paste them in here.
c) Go the bottom of the listing and report it to eBay. It is against the intent of ebay Private Listings for items at this price. It is used on purpose to hide the fraud.
5. Use the tool http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs
Type in the sellers name. Look for any signs of fake usb flash drives. Contact people who bought these items and complained. Ask them to contact sosfakeflashdrive@gmail with their story. Remember, we only need 1 confirmation. This action is a proactive approach. The sooner a seller is detected, the sooner the research can begin and the seller added to the list. It also allows for internet alerts that will assist other buyers to find us, the truth and to fight back. We feel this could help to shorten their fake flash careers on eBay.
6. Contact buyers who left positive feedback for a seller and ask them to test, immediately. If they have a fake, ask them to send the information to us. See https://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/report-a-fake/ They risk data loss if they purchased a false capacity usb flash drive. The consequences can be devastating.
Note: You can send only 5 messages a day to eBay members. To sellers you can send about 15 inquiries.
The SOSFakeFlash team needs your help. The message quota is the most serious obstacle against warning people to test. More people are needed to use their id’s to send out the messages. This is the only way that people can be warned.
Most of us received such a message long ago in our inbox. We took the warning seriously. We tested and many of us avoided data loss. Some were not so lucky but at least understood why the data was lost. We fought the fake flash sellers, eBay and Paypal and stayed to address the issue. We set up these websites to help you. Can you help as we have?
SOSFakeFlash 
Bo said
Sheeeesh! Where are all these Fake Flash sellers coming from? It’s like an invading Chinese army ! Hundreds of the little blighters.
What makes it worse is that Ebay are doing virtually NOTHING about these fake sellers.
Buyer protection be damned! …. It’s corporate profits that rule Ebay.
Ebay FULLY KNOW about all of this, but do nothing.
Greed, greed and more greed.
😦
Duncan said
poor little robinhood mouse scammers everywhere. like it! i am trying to contact buyers i can only do 4 msgs a day to get around ebay. i never got my money back paypal said i had to prove the memory card was fake LOL! greed, you got that right
Carl said
What is the best way to stop sellers? Get rid of them?
Randy said
EBay has the power to stop sellers but do they want to?
Watch this old video by the BBC.
A report from the BBC’s consumer programme Watchdog investigating Ebay’s lack of response to fake designer goods being sold on their auction site.
Looks like nothing has changed in the past years since this article was published. EBay is as the video states “washing their hands of the problem.
Traveler said
Warning buyers who have left positive feedback helps. Ebay only allows 5 messages to other ebay members per day and it is better to stay below that limit. Asking the seller a question about an item for sale can open the opportunity to discuss the fact the buyer has been sold a fake too. If everyone was to do the same and get buyers who have left positive feedback, without realising, to use follow up feedback as well, we would soon help stop a lot of these sales and hopefully prevent more buyers become victims. The suggested feedback I have seen on feedback left for other fake sellers is:
FRAUD – fake capacity – test with h2testw – see: sosfakeflash.wordpress.com.
Traveler said
Demand an end to unfair trade practices
This is the recent request from ebay for the buyer to keep fake sellers on ebay. Or am I getting this wrong? Ebay claim only 0.15% of goods were detected or reported as potentially counterfeit. It proves the comment right about the “Report an Item” needing renamed “Recycle Bin”. I too have reported fakes on a daily basis using this method, until my fingers were sore, to no avail.
Reporting to the brand name owners is the only way to get results. No wonder the brand names want their products removed from ebay. They are witnessing and experiencing ebay’s reluctance to do anything about the counterfeits and are trying to do something about it. Their reputations are being ruined and sales dramatically falling as a result of ebay being flooded with blatant fakes and ebay/paypal doing nothing about it as long as they can line their own pockets.
Someone, somewhere needs to set up a new online marketplace for genuine sellers and buyers to trade fairly and openly, with obvious, transparent policing in constant operation.
Ebay and paypal would fiercely oppose an independent body coming in to police their marketplace. They claim they are doing a competent job already.
The brand name owners do not think so.I personally do not think so.What is your opinion?
Aaron said
Just had a couple delivered from Hong Kong – before I knew about this site. Also a third was ‘won’ but after paying that vendor is no longer registered so I don’t expect to see anything.
Anyway, I tested like you suggested and found them fake. I phoned Ebay (UK) and they said a full refund would be back in my PayPal account within 3 days – for all three transcations!
Now off to leave negative feedback.
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Seth said
Kitty,
One year later…
the escalation is still escalating.
I have a question for readers, where are your balls and guts? You have two choices.
1) give up and accept being scammed.
2) fight to get your money back and kick ass.
if you are a newbie, just got scammed, welcome to the club you have a decision to make. Roll over and die or fight. Think ebay cares? Ha ha ha 😕 They make the money don’t give a damn if you do, get cracking and help the people out here.
Ok, so you are a decent sort of person….so you can kiss your money good bye. 😦
Think like the seller, act like the seller.
sosfakeflash you guys need a break why don’t you take the summer off you work too hard and buyers only grab your information but don’t bother to help other buyers.
So Kitty will the escalation keep escalating in 2011? 😆
InspectorTech said
Seth,
Kitty is off duty. I hear you. The main problem is that victims have no clue about what is really going on. If they understood the issue probably more would fight back.
We won’t be taking the summer off.
Instead we are working on deeper investigations, to find out exactly what is going on and who might be involved. It is a no brainer that both eBay and PayPal are very happy to allow fraud, they make millions of dollars in fees from the sale of fake flash memory. Both do everything possible to prevent people from claiming refunds. Members of eBay need to wake up to the harsh reality. You are correct there is a choice to be made. It is important that people report ebay sellers to the project with the report a fake tab at this site. Information will be entered provided people send in the required fields of information. It is impossible right now to provide indivdual counseling to everyone as there are just too many victims.
We do see action by some people who are frauded Seth, unfortunately not enough. The keywords of SOSFakeFlash” and “H2testw” in feedback or follow up feedback do have an impact and help people to find this site.
The subject of fake flash memory is a hot topic, there are so many ‘wanna be’s’ out there. Unfortunate. A decision was made at the last meeting to allow them to do some heavy lifting – have them step up to the plate and begin answering, user queries. Let’s see if they are up to it and dealing with the volume, or if they drop the ball.
The FrankenFlash project intends to work more on investigations. Also to address the issue of powersellers. A lot of ids suspended by eBay have been released to sell fake flash memory again. Pretty sick. It demonstrates that eBay does not care about it’s members, that it’s buyer protection is a sham, read SCAM. You are correct that it is up to victims to fight back any way they can.
It is not a lost cause. We have seen a lot of progress. eBay is peeing in their pants. It is important it continues, they never expected a revolt on the part of members. They are caught by suprise and are feeling the heat. Our objective is to continue raising the temperature.
We are also collecting data. At some point we will tally up the number of items sold, the sales and the profits made. eBay has databases, but so do we. We also have a lot of raw data.
Currently eBay is afraid of brand names, epecially Kingston Technologies and Sony. They are pressuring eBay. It does not address the issue of generics but sales are decreasing.
If only people would wake up. 95% of flash memory products sold on eBay are Hacked. If they were removed, exactly what would be available on eBay for sale?
People need to do the math. eBay is the worse place, the last place anyone should buy MP players, memory cards or usb flash drives from. THAT IS THE MESSAGE needed to be promoted on the internet.
1) Do not buy any memory cards, usb flash drives or MP Players on eBay. Period!
2) If you are a victim, demand your refund and refuse to give up or accept bullshit.
3) Contact other buyers for the seller and warn them.
4) Bad mouth eBay at any opportunity you get, tell anyone and everyone you know about what happened to you. Educate. Inform. Learn from your experience.
5) Blockade eBay sellers based in Asia who offer flash memory items.
To readers we have only one thing to say:
advertise capacity of 16GB 32GB 64GB 128GB or 256GB , if you are lucky you can expect 2GB, 4GB at best.
My site continues to have hits for repairing fakes purchased on eBay. It says it all. If you bought a memory card, your chances of restoring to original capacity is almost nil. Stop wasting your time looking for a repair, use the time and energy to fight back.
InspectorTech said
It is still escalating on ebay.
New observations? ebay sellers have a short time span. They are making up for it by adding ids.
ebay will refund buyers who complain.
The biggest problem? ebay suspending sellers so people can not review their won list. It stinks.
KittyFireFlash said
It continues…
Welcome to our site. We are really sorry you are a victim on eBay! SOSFakeFlash members are victims just like you.
Read https://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/how-are-people-fighting-against-fake-memory-mp-players-usb-flash-drives-and-memory-cards-ebay-and-the-internet/
and decide if you want others to end up in your shoes!
BTW if you funded your purchase with a credit card, choose the easy road, skip eBay and filing a dispute – contact your credit card about the fraud to do a reversal of payment because of fraud. Your credit card company cares more about protecting you then eBay ever will.
Make sure you have your evidence ready to support your claim.
eBay, PayPal and fake flash memory seller will hate you for doing a reversal, but facts are facts. You have the right to be protected from fraud. You also suffer more then loosing your money, you can lose important information, your data and your files. Money can’t replace data loss or the fact you will never be able to reconstruct your files. Losing your photos, data files and memories, doesn’t have a price tag. It hurts!
Learn from your mistake, trust in your credit card. Do not trust in eBay, PayPal or the fake flash memory seller.
Make sure to tell the truth in your feedback or follow up feedback if you left positive feedback. It helps warn other buyers to discover the truth.
Only YOU the victim can tell the truth, warn others and add to the record of fraud on eBay for fake capacity memory cards, mp players and usb flash drives.
paulp said
To confirm, ebay will do nothing about this and neither will paypal. I’ve chasing andrewfan80 right now for selling fake 32GB microSD cards. At this point I suspect the only way to get funds basic is by disputing through credit card company and not raising anything with paypal. Paypal supports fraud based on the email responses I’ve read from them so far.
Aging said
The number of fakes is probably much higher than what eBay says. Many buyers of these fakes may not realize or know they are fakes until months or years later.
I would guess that some one has got hold of a large quanity of factory regects and sold them in large quanity to new eBay US sellers. Ebay makes money on selling and money on Paypal. They don’t worry about it.
Aging said
I forgot, I bought 5 different 32 GB sdhc, none wouls hold over 3 GB. Four sellers refunded money immediatley, one is still contesting through Payal.