SOSFakeFlash

Toward A Fake Flash Drive Free World – No More Counterfeits – No More Data Loss

Report A Fake 2008-2010 (April)

The Fake flash memory wars are raging. Especially on eBay!

Please report your fake flash memory seller to us – see below for the information we need. We do not have all sellers of counterfeit and false capacity usb flash drives, mpx players and memory cards on file. Your contribution helps everyone.

Addresses of sellers from your mailing envelopes are very helpful. It helps us to spot fraud rings operating on eBay. Use the search box and type in your sellers id, if there is an article make sure to leave a comment and also your progress in dealing with him.

As of June 2009, SOSFakeFlash announced a zero tolerance policy. One confirmation can lead to an alert against an eBay seller. We need to reduce the number of victims, too many being frauded. Regards, From the Fake Flash Angels at SOSFakeFlash

Any company who had been involved directly or indirectly with a transaction involving fake flash memory items is liable and responsible – if they chose not to respond to the situation or take the warnings issued by customers seriously. To ignore the issue is to condone it.

If you have confirmed that you have a fake (purchased from eBay) and you wanted it entered into the database as evidence so we can post an alert or update counts against a seller we will need the following information from you:

  1. eBay item number
  2. eBay Seller id
  3. Your eBay Buyer id (d0n’t forget this please)
  4. Your output from H2testw 1.4
  5. eBay item description title
  6. Seller address complete if you have it (mailing envelopes, eBay, PayPal). Important to build profile and track multiple id’s
  7. Seller email address
  8. A short word of you experience and or thoughts if you like (optional)

Reminder, your eBay Buyer id is NOT  published on the internet when you report in to us. eBay fake flash memory seller ids are published on the internet to warn other buyers.

If your seller used private auction listings to hide the listing, or a multiple item buy now listing please send a screen capture of the listing to help us cut down on the investigation time.

To capture your buy now listing is very important if the seller is not on file with us (eBay Fake Memory Seller Lists) , if the seller is suspended you will lose your evidence and so could we.

Send this information directly to sosfakeflashdrive@gmail.com

We will not enter information into the database from a public site without 1-4.

If you are reporting several sellers (it happens) please keep the 1-8 pattern. Easy to understand, the more you save us time the faster we can investigate and enter.

There is no time limit in reporting a seller, you can find a lot of information inside of your paypal account for proof. We have had cases as old as 18 months from purchase being reported. It is why recording in a database is so important.

SOSFakeFlash is very strict about collecting information, data that can be supported and has witnesses to the fake flash memory deed. The alerts and posts we publish – are based on evidence.

The data used used to build the list of fake flash memory sellers on eBay. It is also used to issue summary reports on the problem. Data from victims helped us to produce this report: Global Report – eBay Fake Memory 2008 – 2009 , a two year effort. If anyone wants to dispute with us, we can send them an angry mob of fake flash victims. So if you would like to have your item(s) recorded for the record please send us the information above to: sosfakeflashdrive@gmail.com

It is important to report even if the seller is already on the list or an alert is issued.

It increases the counts and evidence against the seller and for the degree of fraud on eBay too. . We publish the sellers and the current counts in our eBay fake flash sellers list. We also produce statistics and reports from the information you send.

In your feedback please put the calling card of “SOSFakeFlash” + “H2testw“. It helps people to find us and get help. It also unnerves fraudsters as it means their days are now numbered. If you left positive feedback, do a follow up to your original feedback – to let everyone know what you discovered. This makes a difference too. If you have a little time, contact at least 5 other buyers from your fake flash seller to warn them to test. It’s a chain reaction, it helps others, reduces victims and soon brings these fraudulent sellers to the attention of both PayPal and eBay.

425 Responses to “Report A Fake 2008-2010 (April)”

  1. kittyfireflash said

    To Thing,

    Good point. If you or anyone else can find people with the time and money to invest in writing a programme that would speed up the process, a lot of people will be happy. There are several factors that make the test soooooooooo long in some cases:

    1) The speed of computer (PC or Laptop)
    2) Whether a usb 1.1 or 2.0 port is being used
    3) The “advertised” size of the flash chip
    4) The nature of the fake flash reprogramming

    The test was designed to check for all sorts of different issues. It is designed in Germany and that says a great deal. They are known to be extremely thorough.

    The test must do three things, write, read and verify. Any careful test takes time whether it is a hard disk or a flash drive chip, the bigger, the longer it will take – excluding the speed of hardware considerations.

    But there is another reason, currently being investigated by a member of the project – the nature of the fake flash reprogramming. It will be some time before any details on this might be released. Writing to non existent memory… It is both intrigueing and potentially alarming if current theories are correct for what it is actually doing to the flash drive chip. We hope we are wrong!

    Doing benchmarks on fake 32GB usb flash drives verses true capacity 32GB flash drives on the same machine might be interesting but the controller on the flash drives would be different along with the chips, so it would not be a very strong comparison.

    We know the test can take a long time. It is recommended that people run it in the evening and/or overnight, shutting all other non essential programmes down.

    Speed is not exactly what usb flash drives are known for. There is a new kind of usb flash drive only just begining to show up that has speed! It used an eSATA connection instead of usb. See http://www.kanguru.com/eflash.html

  2. James Greenidge said

    Unfortunately we have skeptics and deriders of the issue of fake flash drives from surprising quarters, which doesn’t help lend legitimacy on spreading word of the seriousness of it. Take IRONKEY no less for example. The majority of their forum’s reactions is dismaying:

    IronKey Forum

    Join Date: April 9th, 2009
    Posts: 4
    Default Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    Greetings!

    I’m surprised IronKey marketing hasn’t pounced on this issue!

    https://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/

    One excerpt:

    “In the past year, eBay and Amazon have been flooded with counterfeit flash drives that look identical to name brands. They look JUST LIKE the real deal. I know. Last month I unwarily bought a “Kingston” flash drive on eBay that totally malfunctioned the first hour. After a hardware test on SOSFakeFlash, I called Kingston who weren’t surprised. Though PayPal grudgingly reimbursed me, this goes FAR beyond my being swindled.

    Thousands of these fake drives have been purchased on eBay and Amazon as graduation and birthday gifts and party flavors and are landing in the unwary hands of those whose jobs cannot tolerate data corrupted by one missing digit. These fake flash drives are programmed to fool an OS as to their storage size and speed, and almost always result in corrupting any data they store by their inferior components. Think! When you walk past a hospital or construction site or industrial plant, someone there is plugging a flash drive into computers for precise medical and drug formula info or to feed instructions to heavy machinery or control a chemical plant or an aspect of our communications infrastructure. Maybe even computers aboard military aircraft and ships. This is an insidious and malignant issue that deserves FAR more attention by media and government than it has.

    Please write to your local TV station and political representative about this pernicious blight! The person you eventually help might be you! Would you want the doctor or med tech managing your mother in a hospital to be carrying a fake flash?”

    Pretty frightening stuff, especially since six people I know just found out that they got “hit”.

    JimWG

    #2 Report Post
    Old Yesterday, 09:51 AM
    oper207 oper207 is offline
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    This is why I buy directly from the manufacturer or an authorized rep. To buy from an unknown party (s) , is gambling with your money . Here’s an old saying , here today gone tomorrow . Is it really worth to save a few bucks to compromise security .
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    #3 Report Post
    Old Yesterday, 11:54 AM
    geoffreyf geoffreyf is offline
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    There is another reason not to buy them. Even if they are real but used, you have no way of knowing how much they have been used and therefore how far their performance or data integrity has been degraded.

    Purchasing used mass storage, especially from a less than reputable source, is not a very good idea.
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    Old Yesterday, 01:55 PM
    RobEsson RobEsson is offline
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    Quote:
    Please write to your local TV station and political representative about this pernicious blight!
    Hmmm … while this may be true (and I sure got done by buying a Sony flashdrive in Beijing in 2005 – lesson learned), I am also always suspicious about anything asking me to spam everyone in sight regarding the DREADFUL! FRIGHTENING! SHOCKING!

    IMHO, it strikes me as a meme for email proliferation, which I do not believe to be a great idea.

    Rob
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    Old Yesterday, 09:51 PM
    geoffreyf geoffreyf is offline
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    Also true. I hardly think of someone.wordpress.com as authoritative. There are some crap drives being sold though.

    And yes, DREADFUL! FRIGHTENING! SHOCKING! … invites superlative adjustment therapy. This involves forced marches, eating toads, making clothes of the skins of animals you slaughter, forced post journalism training in Iran and other things that *might* invite the superlative far more readily than getting gypped on a flash drive.
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    #6 Report Post
    Old Yesterday, 10:43 PM
    oper207 oper207 is offline
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    Hmmmmm , “Superlative” O.K. Folks Here it is……..

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superlative

    Wheeeeee
    Last edited by oper207 : Yesterday at 10:48 PM. Reason: I need a Phd.for this one.. Maybe he is going for 3000??
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    #7 Report Post
    Old Today, 12:49 AM
    jimwg jimwg is online now
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    Default Re: Flood of Deadly Fake Flash Drives An IronKey Opportunity
    I take it most of you don’t think fake drives are much of a problem, um?

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  3. RockDoctor said

    Would you want the doctor or med tech managing your mother in a hospital to be carrying a fake flash?”

    Frankly, James, the idea of any medical personnel carrying any sort of memory device when they’re at their work (except in a roadside-paramedic setting, possibly, for published reference material) is quite scary. I’d be inclined to try to have them arrested on the spot, if not perform a citizens arrest myself. IF they’re a genuine medic, then they’ll have appropriate access to my medical records through their fixed network wiring without need for any sort of personal memory devices at all ; if they’re not a genuine medic, they should not have access to any of my records under any circumstances. (You could imagine my response were I to find medical records being accessed through a wireless network, no matter it’s claimed security! I don’t trust the security of wireless networking at work, where you need to have presented your passport to get within a kilometre of the structure and the data only occasionally exceeds a few million dollars of sensitivity. I certainly don’t trust wireless for important or sensitive data.) If they’re a genuine medic, then the simple process of not carrying a memory device while they’re in their working environment will reduce their exposure to losing data on said memory device. They’re provided with networked workstations for precisely this reason – to keep the data where it should be.
    (At work, we protect people from getting wedding rings snagged in machinery : the first time you’re caught at work wearing your wedding ring, you’re verbally warned ; the second time, you’re warned in writing ; the third time you’re sent home on the next helicopter, fired and blacklisted. “Go and work in a different industry, we don’t want you here!”)
    I’ll remember to ask the doctor next time I’m in to see her (or him, depends who it is), but I’d expect that the USB ports on their workstations are glued into unusability. And the CD-reader would be a reader, not a writer (if it existed at all).

    Sadly a lot of poeple do not seem to understand how disasterous data loss can be. They do not realise that lives may depend on it.

    While the situation of flash memory fraud is annoying, is such hyperbole helpful?
    Anyone who is in a situation to put others lives at risk should have been positively vetted long before getting into that situation, and in this day and age data security (against theft, error and equipment failure) is necessary in working with data. (Necessary, but not sufficient.) If you don’t “get” that, then you should not be working with data.

    I certainly agree that losing data can have serious personal or financial consequences. I’ve personally pulled data from more than a few knackered hard drives for friends (I am not a computer technician – just a geologist), and as I’ve been doing it I’ve beaten the drum that “I won’t do this again” alternating with “This is what a backup is for.” That’s what friends do for friends. I’ve done it at work too – laptops and coffee don’t play well together.
    People who are too stupid to start doing backups after that deserve to lose their data. And probably wouldn’t have remained as friends for much longer in any case. I commented a couple of days ago that “a backup that hasn’t been tested by being restored from is WORTHLESS” (or words to that effect). I have yet to see a reason to modify that concept.

    I would sincerely hope that no-one who posts to this board once will be getting caught again. But I’d expect that there are some people who will not learn. Those who sail too close to the edge between “good value” and “scam” should either stop doing it, or start being appropriately cautious. The “16GB” drive that I got “caught” by is still in service – carefully set up to it’s 4GB tested capacity, and only used to copy encrypted data files between the insecure (client-supplied, wireless-networked, Internet-connected) laptop and the secure (fingerprint-reader access, no wired network, no wireless device) laptop on my office desk here. And when (not “if”) that fraudulent flash stick dies, I’ll reach into my briefcase for a better quality memory stick and continue working. That is all that it is good for. Exposure to data loss is of the order of 5 minutes time or a few £(GBP) value ; this is deliberate.

  4. Chad said

    Sadly a lot of poeple do not seem to understand how disasterous data loss can be. They do not realise that lives may depend on it. They cannot visualise situations in which vital data entrusted to fake memory vanishes. They don’t have any vital data that has serious consequences for other peoples lives themselves. They lack the imagination to see the potentially devastating effect for those who do.

    RockDoctor put this a lot more gently that I would. I’m simply calling bullshit on you. Lives depend on flash drives? As Seth and Amy once said… “Really?” You put life-dependant data on a flash drive without having a backup? Wait, let me back up a minute here… you copied data someone’s life depended on to a flash drive, and deleted the originals before copying the data back off the flash drive onto someplace more secure and stable? Really???

    If so, then I’m not going to mince words: you’re an idiot.

    I don’t even put my freaking music collection on a flash drive without having a back-up. My flash drives are all combination temporary storage / transfer device while I copy data from one machine to another without needing to pass it through a network. Even my 32GB serves the same purpose that 3.5″ floppy disks served back in 1982…

  5. James Greenidge said

    Chad & RockDoctor;

    I’m mentioning this because the issue fightflashfraud mentioned IS legit and happening. The issue is not how tenderly YOU handle your drives but how countless OTHERS do, and I can tell you here in Queens NY with neighbors and relatives among some of the top hospitals and clinics in the Northeast that there ARE unwary interns and med-techs who use these online-purchased ubiquitous flash drives on the job for whatever tasks or equipment. You can wave one around in the halls of top-class Long Island Jewish Hospital and not raise an eyelash, much less a security guard. Let’s don’t even get started with the industrial sector.

    If you phone a Kingston CSR and ask whether data can be corrupted in drives with inferior components they affirm that. They do not recommend absolute life critical info be put on these flash drives — theirs included — but they demurely admit “that people are using them anyway, like cell phones in planes and hospitals when you’re not.” They quickly cite their warranty then, and tellingly, they won’t comment on the ramifications of corrupted flash drive data used in computer systems. I wish they would to clear the air, but that they won’t even elaborate on this is dismaying to me.

    The sole cure to this issue before someone or lots of someones get seriously hurt is Education, NOT belittling the messenger.

    Jim

  6. KittyFireFlash said

    There are “things” we can publish at SOSFakeFlash and things we can not. People’s jobs would be at stake and worse. In providing information, some are stepping into the confession booth.

    USB flash drives are used to store important medical data in the field. Particularily in combat situations. The work of the people involved at “somebody.wordpress.com” as an IronFlash forum person said, allowed for a number of fake flash usb drives to be discovered in time.

    Government organizations have been impacted as well, which ones, which countries. Nobody’s business. The media would have a field day.

    We live in a “Cut”, “Cut” – Slash, Slash world. Penny pinching in the extreme. A lot of people just do not expect or know that there is a thing called false capacity – that it is possible to reprogamme flash drive chips to lie about their actual size. The people who work in this project, had no clue about it either, until they got stung.

    It goes without saying that important data, data that is extremely private or confidential should be on the best, most secure flash drives. Most likely an IronKey. Tell that to the penny pinching accountants and those in management who want brownie points for the cost saving they “generated” this quarter. People who need to get work done etc, will find ways, but again they never expected to land into situations as they did.

    The average person typing on a keyboard using technology, does exactly that – use technology. They do not know very much about it’s details or inner workings. Most people learn to drive a car, but just how many can take it apart to fix it, or even change a wheel these days? They don’t look for trouble, they are generally trusting (beyond the issue of computer viruses or spy-ware and then they expect the software they bought to take care of it).

    People might be a bit wary of generic usb flash drives, but they do not expect this for a brand name.

    Personally, I agree with Jim. The key is EDUCATION!. There must be greater awareness.

    We toil and slave over these sites precisely to provide that.

    In the past we did a very effective job – inside of eBay. The place where this fight really needs to be as it is one of the most significant sources for the distribution of these dangerous devices. However, eBay not only was unsympathetic, they began to perscuit members who put up those warning listings. They removed them, one by one. They suspended member accounts. They made life hell for these members. Do you have any idea, how many id’s people went through?

    What is warning listing?

    It can take many forms. It can be a person auctioning their fakes, stating they were fakes, with the full story of how they acquired them. Sometimes even from which seller. In other cases it can be just providing information and assistence to anyone who wants to know more. In others it included a warning to read up on the subject by visiting our main site. All advised people to be careful and to test.

    What did these warning listings do?

    They reduced the number of bidders for items that were soon found out and of course the profits. They woke people up to not expect such fabulous bargains as there is/was no such thing. It reduced the number of flash drive fakes being offered very quickly. This of course impacted sales. It had people quickly leaving negative feedback for a seller if the buyer tested and realized they had been sold false capacity. It also caught a lot of buyers early – who noticed they had problems with their flash drives and frequently before they had stored a great deal of important information on them and saved them from more unpleasant consequences.

    Frequently victims buy more than one. Usually in a short period of time – before any arrive and they learn the truth.

    These victims pounded on eBay’s doors. They tried to get them to take notice of the issue. They tried to have them STOP these sellers. In almost all cases, eBay ignored them. On average it took over 10 phone calls from a person against a seller to get them to even consider investigating.

    Because of trying to shut down those members who had warning listings instead of shutting down the known fake flash sellers, we turned up the heat and we continue to do so. They monitor our lists and our alerts. eBay takes “somebody.wordpress.com” a lot more seriously now. The data speaks for itself.

    Yes victims learn. Yes, they are unlikely to repeat the experience on eBay. In fact many leave eBay as a result of the experience all together. They provide bad press for eBay and also for PayPal in their local communities. We are sure, friends and family and colleagues want them to stop repeating their fake flash stories over and over again. But it stays in people’s minds and is unfair to honest eBay sellers – they pay the price.

    The problem is, a new crop of victims is born every day. The economic recession, leads people to try and buy at lower prices. Money is very tight for many, most people are worried for their jobs and are conserving their finances. Last month over 580,000 people lost their jobs in the USA alone, in other countries there are similar percentages based on the population size. Things like this are causing people who would otherwise buy local to come to eBay in search of a lower price. They have no idea what awaits them. Fake Flash sellers are ready to offer the illusion.

    We are swamped. The fraudlent sellers are indeed taking advantage of the economic times. For them it is a great opportunity. They are also smarter as they know they will be shut down in time. So they dump and run.

    So Everyone

    Should people try to set up warning listings again? It is a good idea, but we would advise people get new id’s they can afford to lose. Learn from the fake flash sellers – they have a sack full of id’s prepared long in advance.

    Should people continue to try and post information at forums? It is a good idea, regardless of the indifferent responses from some. In fact, it is important for people who know languages other than English to visit sites and forums in those languages to promote awareness. This is a global problem not simply limited to English speaking countries. Internet translations do help and we are even trying our best to do some articles at the sites in other languages. Mind you, to respond we have to fire up those translators.

    We are now entering our 19th month, many have been helped and many in the future will from the information we present. eBay does shut sellers down. Something they didn’t do a year ago. So progress is being made. It is just too slow for the volume.

    You don’t have to devote every waking hour to address the issue, but if everyone, does a little “something” we move forward.

  7. ITGuy said

    To add KittyFireFlash response to thing
    A simple quick program that could verify flash drives would be nice, but there are too many software components in windows and on the flash controller doing logical to physical address mapping to make this feasible.

    It is possible on hard drives to write to specific physical sector; however, from a windows perspective all writes to a flash drive are to a logical sector. The flash controller does the mapping of logical to physical sectors and you as a windows programmer have no control over where on the flash drive the data will be written. Wear level software gets involved and selects where the data will be written.

  8. ITGuy said

    Further to RockDoctors comments

    In the IT industry one of the issues you are pointing out is referred to is loosely referred to as “data integrity”. The industry found that data when stored on some media can get corrupted over time. Also can anyone recall how reliable floppy drives were? The IT solution to this was programs that saved the data along with checksum or codes that were used to verify that the data when read was correct.

    One easy way to ensure data integrity on Flash or other media is to use Zip type utilities.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_integrity

  9. RockDoctor said

    Jim, ITGuy, KittyFlashFire, Chad ;

    I’m not trying to belittle the work that you guys do. I think that Chad’s “RockDoctor put this a lot more gently that I would.” agrees.

    It is infuriating and a very sad statement on human nature (as well as the beancounter-manager nature that KittyFlashFire refers to ; I don’t count them as human) that the fake flash sellers want money enough to do what they do ; it’s a pretty sad statement on humanity that they find a willing, through under-education, target audience. “There’s one born every minute,” as PT Barnum once said. It’s a sad and potentially legally-compromised position that eBay/ PayPal are taking by allowing fake sellers to continue.

    Ultimately the only solution to this is going to be when people generally “get” the concept of “data integrity” that ITguy talks of. “data integrity” is something I learned about through the simple failure of a (genuine) 3M 1.2MB floppy disc in about 1988, which my colleague and I recovered from because we’d got hard-copy of the data and could manually re-enter the 5000-odd lost records (20 fields apiece) into the system before the client noticed. 3 days on 3hours a day of sleep teaches lessons firmly. If strangling the demand doesn’t work, then reducing the supply of fake flash through terrorism of the sellers might work. There is a news reporting maxim known as “if it bleeds, it leads”. I doubt that there is going to be adequate news coverage of this problem until one or more people do die, publicly and messily, because of it. I still don’t understand what “life saving” information a medic would be writing to a memory stick – maybe it’s a function of the commercial health care system in the States, I don’t know – but that would seem to be a prime locus for the inevitable event to happen. It would also be a prime locus for well-funded cover-ups and “shooting the messenger”.

    Combat medics may be less prone to shooting at the messenger, if only because they’d expect the messenger to shoot back. Oh, hang on, does that joke work in America? Whatever. That might be an emotive situation that could be exploited to get coverage which would be more beneficial to the larger aim of public education.
    “The ends justify the means” arguments are at best weak. A more morally defensible way of achieving the aim of public education would be to reinstate public hanging and populate town squares with the dangling bodies of former fake flash sellers. Make sure that a few of the bodies are of “boy next door” types who brought fake flash innocently on eBay and re-sold it without testing it, and you’d be able to attack a second vector of the problem.

    Some might think that re-introducing hanging might be going a little far for what is essentially low-monetary-value fraud with potentially major consequences. My actual plans for the fake sellers don’t involve hanging … remember that line near the end of ‘Pulp Fiction’ about the life expectancy of “Mr About-to-spend-the-rest-of-his-life-in-unendurable-agony Rapist here”? Pass me the blow torch and pliers. And an anatomy manual.

    As a cheerful note from the past – it only took Ralph Nader about 7 years to acheive legislative attention from starting to campaign about vehicle safety, which delay I guesstimate to have involved between 10000 and 100000 unnecessary deaths (7 years x 14 deaths/100000/year (Wikipedia) (I wish this post widget allowed previewing!) for a 200 million population in the early 1960s = 196000 deaths ; choose a number for the avoidable proportion ; see also http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtad/pdf/longterm.pdf). If this board’s campaign has been going for 19 months (KittyFlashFire’s assertion ; I’ve no reason to doubt it), then there’s 5 years and 5 months to go before we can think that we’re not being terribly effective.

    Ways forward ?
    Stopping the trade will require changes to human nature or human intelligence which are, frankly, unfeasible. Taking the Nader example – people are always going to fall for the marketing man’s idiocies over the engineer’s reasoning. So, engineers developed things like airbags which protected people whether they wanted them or not. I don’t hear many reports of car nuts removing the airbags from their cars, because people that much into the cars generally understand enough to think the protection mechanisms are a good idea.
    By analogy – we’d need to take the task of checking memory out of the hands of the user and put it into the computer. Which means putting it into the OS. Which means Gnu/Linux, xBSD and friends ; let Windoze catch up if it dares to fall behind. Or, more likely, MS will copy it once the bugs have been worked out on Free OS-es ; I don’t care.

    ITGuy – I don’t know the other “regulars” backgrounds enough, so I’ll address this to you :
    I propose an add on to the USB mounting code so that when a machine detects a mass-storage device being mounted, with a valid filesystem identified, it looks (R/O) for a message signed by itself (this machine’s kernel, usual public-key methods) that confirms this USB-mass storage device’s capacity (file name considerations, solvable details). If no confirmation is found, before the filesystem is re-mounted R/W by the kernel, the kernel/ USBFS/ filesystem/ whatever tries to write to the highest un-used block on the filesystem. Read back. Then check in the middle of the file system, read-back ; at the quarters, read back. By this point, if the device is reading at top, middle, bottom and quarters, then it’s probably safe to return the device to the user while continuing to do a binary search through the filesystem looking for places to write to verify the capacity. Or, revert to a background version of the blanket write-readback technique the H2testW does. At several points in the testing, write the information about the device’s good-block/ bad-block map into a file on the file system and sign/ encrypt it with the machine’s private key.
    Yes, increased write cycles on a limited-lifetime medium. But once a particular machine has “seen” a device and verified it, then that’ll be it. If the user erases the “bad-block” map, tough on the user. Put the device into a computer that hasn’t seen it before, it’ll take a few seconds to do the “on-mount” tests and a while longer to fully verify the drive (but it wouldn’t need to do the drive all in one go, testing could resume the next time *that* kernel saw *that* particular filesystem – that’s why the signatures are there.
    Hey – I remember that in the bad old days of MFM/ RLL hard drives, each drive had it’s bad-block table printed out and taped onto the drive chassis. I remember having to run BIOS programs from the drive controller card using debug to read/ edit/ write the bad-block table. So, if I had my old Norton hard drive book (Pink Shirt, weight about 3 kilos and is at home ; I fly home in about 8 days), I’d find that this is not exactly a new technique.

    Returning to the rest, and leaving ITguy to comment on whether that scheme is sane ; ultimately if one can persuade the Operating System to check EVERY drive then the sellers of fake flash would evaporate. Every one of their fake devices would be detected on first use. Ultimately, since flash memory does wear out (limited to around 100,000 write cycles generally), each OS will have to start verifying this stuff on the fly anyway. Even a genuine 64GB Kingston memory stick will eventually wear out.

    This post is far too long already. And I’ve got a drill bit to go and examine.
    TTFN

  10. ITGuy said

    In response to RockDoctor’s comments –

    The IT industry learnt through the school of hard knocks that you cannot have enough backup copies of your data and that you need to test your data recovery processes to ensure that you can recover your data. A whole segment of the IT exists to support major corporations Disaster recovery plans / operations. How many people keep multiple backup copies of the data on their PC/notebook hard drive?

    The IT industry also learnt that device error checking (ECC etc) does not adequately ensure data integrity when data moves between devices. For example the programs that saved data to tapes computed checksums before writing information to tape and verified this information on restore. Since then data integrity issues have blended with data security issues. MD5 hashes, digital signatures etc are now being used to ensure that data has not been modified.

    A software product that can help with data integrity and security on removable media, is TrueCrypt. I have not had time to test out the program but people have recommended the product to me. This could be the subject of a future post.

    Yes the problem created by fake flash drives could be eliminated with smarter operations systems. Microsoft on some version of their Operation System offer drive and volume based encryption. Encrypted volumes can only mount after they satisfy a number of conditions. Solving this problem in the operation system would solve the problem from the IT perspective but what about the consumer electronics perspective. Consumer products (cameras, media players etc) use more flash media than the IT industry and cost seems the key consideration in this area.

    Some of the other concepts you discussed exist and are referred to as memory / disk scrubbing. Enterprise disk subsystem and large computer system have this capability as part of their “health check routines”.

    It may take a while for some of this technology to trickle down to consumer products but it should. Some manufactures are including static wear levelling capabilities on their flash drives. This is somewhat similar to disk scrubbing routines and provides some ability to discover bad blocks and add them to the bad block table on the flash drive. The manufacture have added static wear level to address the limited number of erase cycles that MLC NAND flash drives support – 10,000. The faster and more expensive NOR based flash drives support 100,000 erase cycles.

  11. RockDoctor said

    IT Guy said :

    Consumer products (cameras, media players etc) use more flash media than the IT industry and cost seems the key consideration in this area.

    Ummm, cameras are media generators – so yes, I could see them being vulnerable to fake media if they didn’t check each and every device as it came in. And with there being “trampling hordes” of budget camera makers, trying to get all of them to implement appropriate checking of every medium on every mount would be a Sysiphean task. The quality end of the market … you know, I think that the next eBay scammer I expose might just be one selling suspiciously cheap SD cards, and I’ll see what my Nikon makes of them. Annoyingly, my mate also has a Nikon. As does my photographically-inclined colleague Steve. Ah, but Daddy drives a Pentax DSLR and is coming up in a few weeks. eBay, here I come !

    Media players – all the media players that I’ve used are mass storage. I gather that there are often “shovelware” applications for managing one’s library of lectures etc, but I’ve never been bothered to waste time learning such shovelware. Do they verify data after writing? Can the developers be persuaded to put such verification tests in, even as an option. Another Sysiphean task, I suspect.

    Drill, drill, drill … work to do before I finish shift and go off the net-connected machine.

  12. sayantan said

    i baught one usb drive sony microvault 360 gb from china. i cant use it. help me

  13. louf said

    Item 16gb mp3 player
    ebayer urgentshipping2u

    The media is likely to be defective.
    1.8 GByte OK (3953560 sectors)
    4.3 GByte DATA LOST (9104488 sectors)
    Details:2.1 GByte overwritten (4602600 sectors)
    0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
    2.1 GByte corrupted (4501888 sectors)
    8 KByte aliased memory (16 sectors)
    First error at offset: 0x0000000078a73000
    Expected: 0x0000000078a73000
    Found: 0x0000000078a71000
    H2testw version 1.3

    no end test

  14. Sako said

    This guy is basicly saying there fakes, And also saying he wont refund people! 😮 I contacted him and just got a load of abuse! Have a look.

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280374777704&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:GB:1123

  15. Sako said

    The link still works ok! His user id is marc.86

    Paul

  16. Traveler said

    martin.2k1

    A question from a concerned ebay member was put to martin.2k1, which was answered truthfully by martin.2k1. I have below the question and answer which shows at the bottom of martin.2k1 listing.

    QUESTION

    Can you guarantee this drive will show close to 64gb if tested with h2testw recommended at sosfakeflash and fightflashfraud websites?
    Will the serial number be genuine if verified online with Kingston?
    Is the activity light on the drive green?
    When selecting properties on the drive, does the drive show as Kingston?

    I have to ask as their seem to be a lot of counterfeits about.

    Copy and paste this to address bar at very top of your page to check if drive is genuine. Many sellers have been unknowingly sold counterfeits and ended up with negative feedbacks or suspension as a result. Better safe than sorry.

    http://www.kingston.com/asia/verify/default.asp

    ANSWER

    Sorry to dissappoint but it seems this is a copy of a genuine product. The storage capacity shows 64 GB when you run the pendrive though.

    Ebay allows this to go on without doing anything about it. Reporting the item seems to do no good. Link below for listing of 100% guarantee to be fake.

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120450688524&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:GB:1123

  17. Traveler said

    marc.86

    This was the sellers answer when asked if he could guarantee the drive to be genuine or at least try to verify with Kingston. He was given the link to Kingston verification page and had the option to at least prove to himself that the drives were either real or counterfeit. Maybe he did and found out for sure. If he did, he’s not telling us. I can only draw one conclusion from that. If I found out drives I was not sure about were genuine, I would let everyone know.But no, marc.86 has not said a word.

    I cannot guarantee this whatsoever, no. As I haven’t opened the pack as it isn’t resealable. If you have your doubts, please do not bid. Thanks marc.86

  18. Traveler said

    SAYANTAN 360GB SONY MICRO VAULT

    Your micro drive is obviously a fake. What seller did you buy from?

    No matter who you bought it from, you can use ebay safety centre, resolve a problem to get started on claim for your money back through paypal (presuming you used paypal). There is no such thing as a genuine 360gb flash drive from Sony. Get your claim in straight away.

  19. KittyFireFlash said

    Regarding eBay seller marc86

    His listing title clearly states it is a “kingston 64gb data traveler 150”. He uses the Kingston name in his listing. He wrote:

    I as the seller marc86 cannot guarantee this product to be genuine kingston device as i did not get it from the manufacturer itself, i can guarantee the product is 100% sealed un opened, and the pictures you see in this listing is the exact product you will recieve. no returns will be accepted when opened whatsoever bid with this knowladge in mind thanks for looking.

    One indicator for this seller is where he might have acquired the DT150’s and also the price he paid. He could easily call Kingston Technologies or write to them for assistence. They could be genuine but perhaps not.

    Basically his listing indicates the buyer is taking a risk.

    Given all the information published on DT150′ being sold on eBay published at the different sites in the FrankenFlash project there is only one advise to give to a potential buyer:

    Never buy any Kingston DT150 usb flash drives on eBay! Unless….. the seller indicates he is an authorized Kingston reseller. The fraud regarding counterfeit Kingston DT150 usb flash drives in 32GB and 64GB advertized capacity runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for the past few months. In only one counterfeit ring over 4,600 were sold to unsuspecting members

    The risk to your data is not worth it. Spend a little more and buy from a reputable local dealer.

  20. Sako said

    Ref marc.86

    I checked the serial number on the product in his listing with Kingston! This came back!

    Serial Number: KT14195-00014209
    License Key: G582G51-37B0846D
    Email Address:
    The flash memory product you inquired was already registered by another user, so it may not be authentic Kingston memory product

  21. James Greenidge said

    I’m not hitting on Kingston, but I’d REALLY like to know what aggressive measures they’re taking to protect their profits and reputation from rip-offs. To my knowledge, they’ve never prosecuted a fraudulent “authorized” Kingston dealer or ran any anti-counterfeit flash memory campaign in their ads. I figure that if eBay thinks Kingston isn’t all that worried about this issue, why should they?

    James Greenidge

  22. Sako said

    I did a blog that might help people spot fakes! i hope it helps

    http://blogs.ebay.co.uk/wakosako/entry/HOW-TO-SPOT-FAKE-CORSAIR-FLASH-DRIVES/_W0QQidZ947675012

  23. RockDoctor said

    Sako
    Concerning your drive from marc.86 – the packaging looks identical to the one I had from “David Jansen”/ronaldkibuuka in Sheffield about a month ago. The item of interest is the lack of colour in the Windows logo on the packaging.

    It’s a fake – but you knew that already.

    Concerning Kingston’s activity. When I was in email and telephone contact with them, and once I’d passed on the details of my transaction with the Sheffield dealer, they were saying that it would take their legal team “a few hours” to get the auction taken down. Which did indeed happen (though I wasn’t keeping a stopwatch going).
    They are definitely aware of the problem, and active. What their constraints are, I don’t know ; probably they have to obtain prima facia evidence on each and every auction … which is a total bind. IANA-Lawyer, but presumably there are issues of not being able to presume guilt and eBay not being able (or willing) to act without evidence. Not good, I know, but are the alternatives any better?

  24. KittyFireFlash said

    Thank You All!

    The only way to make progress is by putting shoulder to the wheel! Kingston Technologies is fighting the counterfeits as best they can. Reporting to them helps. They need all the help they can get, any information you have and can provide them makes a difference.

    Corsair knows about us too. We know this from monitoring their forum. They need your help as well.

    It is very difficult for “Brand Names”. They have to deal with legal issues in many different countries. Unlike public “Blogs”, they walk a tight rope.

    To fight counterfeits and fakes is not easy. It applies to brand names and to generics. The fraud involves finacial loss to many buyers. But… It also involves something much more terrible – the loss of data.

    There is no way to put into words that would justify the impact.

    Just imagine this – supposing that your hard disk was wiped – everything gone. How would you feel? How much of your important files do you have backed up elsewhere?

    Could you recover? The most horrible thing is not just losing money that is so difficult to earn in our current economic climate. It is losing information that can not be reclaimed. Or that requires untold hours to reconstruct if you are fortunate to have a paper trail. For memory cards that capture pictures, there is no way to turn back the clock, to relive or redo.

    If one thinks about brand names such as Kingston, or Corsair or Sony or Adata one might assume mega profit. The sad fact is, to produce the flash drive items, if memory cards, mp players or usb flash drives costs money. To develope the technology or inovade costs money. The R&D to move the technology forward is very expensive. They need to break even at least on this. Counterfeiting and offering fakes chokes this. It also reduces consumer confidence.

    Imagine if it was your company how would you feel? Would you decide to throw in the towel? Stop spending on R&D to produce the next generation?

    Brand name companies need to know where the counterfeits are. Who is selling them. Location. Names. Places. They desperately need your intel. They will flex their legal arms, if you if them the information they need.

    eBay sadly is one of the most lethal conduits for the fake and false capacity market in nand based technology ie memory cards, usb flash drives and mp players. eBay and also PayPal have for over 5 years tried to wiggle their way out of assuming responsiblity or addressing the issue.

    It is why the FrankenFlash Project was born. It has to STOP! Who can make it stop? YOU! can make it stop. Only when people say Enough! Is there a possibility for progress.

    So you found this site. Consider this. 19 months ago one person was a victim on eBay. The person, like you researched the internet and was horrified on what was found. Also that person studied the issue and decided to investigate. Contacting other ebay members it became clear there were MANY victims.

    So what happened?

    That person contacted others. They contacted other ebay victims. Today the project has quite a few different sites dealing with the different issues.

    The power of “ONE”…..becomes the many.

    True many who voleenter on this project got their money back. In fact, the “ONE” who started all of this has an interesting record.

    1) refunded in full, including shipping and handling.
    2) never returned one fake flash item
    3) never went thru the paypal ying yang agonies that some buyers face.
    4) The number of items runs in the double digits.
    5) Chose not to walk away after having fought the battle with fake flash sellers and won.
    6) Stayed to fight with others. Why? For you!

    We don’t ask that people give up their lives. Only that they make a little contribution. Contact others who bought from your seller. Warn them. That makes a difference!

    We wish someone had warned us! We found out the hard way.

    This is a horrible problem. We do not expect it to go away over night. After all we have fought for 19 months. eBay and PayPal do not deserve sympathy. They are accomplises in this masssive fraud.

    You the victims have and are making a difference. In the past paypal almost always sided with fake flash sellers. They don’t know. A lot of victims get refunds. In the past eBay was deaf and dumb when a seller is reported. Not so now, they monitor our sites and are suspending a lot of sellers when we publish. We wonder why? Fact is, they are worried. When they “suspend” a seller they have the opportunity to erase the fake flash sellers tracks. Kapoof! All listings are removed. Evidence is gone.

    We struggle very hard to capture all the information in advance, so if eBay suspends, we have information and data! True it slows us down and we may release alerts much later than we want to. You can thank eBay for that! In the interest of victims and to document we have no choice now.

    If your fake flash seller has been suspended on eBay and the listings removed and you can no longer leave feedback, you are most welcome to leave your feedback at this site! Speak up. Let people know. This is the recorded history that both ebay and paypal can not deny.

    Report in, get yourself added in the database. Contact other buyers. Warn them. If you bought a brand name counterfeit let the brand names know. If you bought on eBay, report the sellers listings. Every action you take is a nail in the sellers confin.

    Allow this site to be your testimony.

    It is a fact that the root of the problem stems from the orient. Specifically CHINA! Write to the chinese embassy or trade commission in your country and voice your disapproval!

    In general the rule of thumb for written communications is, 1 email or letter, speaks for 10,000 people. Reason? Few take the action to write.

    The nand flash chip industry is in serious trouble due to the ecomomic climate. FABS (factories that produce nand memory chips) are closing down or reducing production. This fake and false capacity issue is hurting them big time

    Fraud is every where. It is big business. The source is China. The only way to put a stop to this is the source – China. Let the government there know how you feel.

    Use any and every oppportunity to record the truth. Vist forums and blogs. Increase internet awareness. Basically, make life hell for fake flash sellers on eBay. Make life hell for PayPal. Make life hell for eBay.

    Do not spare anyone who is involved direct or in directly in the problem. If you are angry as a victim, then do something postive to address the issue. Anything. Everything. It helps!

  25. Sako said

    Looks like we have a new FAKE seller on eBay! Check out dan-software And his Kingston 64Gb The wraping and the price sugest there Fakes! He has evan put in the decription quote!” BRAND NEW & SEALED – DONT BE FOOLED BY FAKES – GENUINE!” Lol

  26. RockDoctor said

    Sako said
    July 27, 2009 at 16:22
    Looks like we have a new FAKE seller on eBay!

    From the number of spam postings coming through on the email (which I also see the moderators are taking down), some spotty little oik of a scammer has realised where some of their troubles are coming from.
    I’d take that as a compliment.

  27. JGM said

    Just received fake 8GB Pen Drive -> tested 2 GB.
    Item title: New 8GB USB 2.0 Flash Pen Drive Memory Stick Red LR
    Web Address: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280368094724
    Item number: 280368094724
    Seller User ID: ionedream
    The seller has refunded me 5 minutes after my Paypal’s complain.

  28. Sako said

    Another seller of Fakes on eBay and they are getting cheaper (£29.99)! User luxurybabi Item number 390074994060

    Sako

  29. Traveler said

    To Sako,

    Dan-software drives are gone now.

    Message from luxurybabi that was received in response to ebay member questioning authenticity of drives.

    “I am sorry I do not have any more as I only bought ten from a guy at the local sunday market.
    It’s the first time I have sold things like this, so not too sure if I should sell these sort of things again.”

    Purchases in this sellers listings only mentioned 6 drives sold at time of message. Maybe seller got cold feet when questioned.

    If anyone has bought a drive from these seller, please test and send in your results to the email address given at https://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/report-a-fake/ Your input is welcomed and valued by the team here at fightflashfraud. The more evidence gathered on these sellers, the better. This is your chance to help fight against the injustice we all suffer as a result of this ongoing fraud.

  30. RockDoctor said

    Traveller said :
    Message from luxurybabi that was received in response to ebay member questioning authenticity of drives.

    “I am sorry I do not have any more as I only bought ten from a guy at the local sunday market.
    It’s the first time I have sold things like this, so not too sure if I should sell these sort of things again.”

    Good grief – it never for one second occurred to me that someone would buy this sort of equipment at a car-boot sale. “Incredible” is my response – either I don’t believe the seller’s claims, or I don’t believe that people can be so stupid as to buy such goods at a car-boot.
    But when I type it … I have no rational basis for not believing that people could be so stupid as to buy “blister-pack” wrapped “genuine” items at a car-boot, though surely they must know that they’re fakes.

    Perhaps it’s the sellers who have found eBay too hot for themselves dumping inventory on the car-boots. Wouldn’t surprise me.

  31. KittyFireFlash said

    Hi RockDoctor

    We see this all the time. Get rich quick scheme. Unfortunately sellers do not do their homework. Quite a few buy liquidation lots and so on.

    Believe it or not we have honest eBay sellers who also sell in local fleamarkets. Given eBay and PayPal fees they actually make more!

    You can end up buying a fake on a bus in India when being chatted up by a fellow passenger who mentions the great deal he got. You can visit a lot of fancy malls for tourists in China and end of with fakes in an electronics store that looks a lot like a retail store back home.

    We even have a young student who bought knowing it was a fake, from a stall in China. He offered to do intel and buy more to test. SOSFakeFlash chose NOT to publish his story or any details on him. Why? His personal safety. He is in a foreign country where the rules and laws are very different from the west. As much as we would have liked his onsite investigation, his personal safety mattered more. He has his whole life ahead of him and it would be wrong to ask him as a to take such risks, even if he spoke and read the chinese language. It was a tough call.

    SOSFakeFlash needs inside information from China from Chinese people who are against this terrible fraud and data loss. It is not for young foreigners who do not understand the system, despite their enthusiasm to undertake such missions.

    We have been given insider information in China now and then. It is risky and they need to be very careful. This is big business and serious fraud. It is also tolerated for some reason by the Chinese government. We do not know why. We do welcome information, there are many honest people in the orient who are as horrified as we are. Only we stress, caution in providing us with information.

    You will find these fake memory devices in every corner of the world now. It is a plague!

    And yes, people interested in a 500x profit margin jump at the oppportunity to sell this stuff on eBay.

    There is now a zero tolerance policy in effect at SOSFakeflash.. If just one eBay member reports in with the necessary evidence, we will put the seller on the fake flash sellers list and an alert is more than likely to be issued against the seller. If an alert is issued, SOSFakeFlash will never remove it from the internet!. Why? We have the evidence and the victim. Excuses are no longer accepted, regardless of reasons presented. There is no choice. The problem is just too serious. Only if a seller can prove:

    1) Every buyer was contacted and refunded in full
    2) Every Buyer received an apology
    3) Financial restitution was made for any necessary data reconstruction and recovery from other sources was financed

    does a seller found guilty have any hope of redemption.

    The fact is, a seller must understand his product, research it, test it and guarantee it. If they can’t or won’t, there is one message, don’t sell!

    Our major concern, RockDoctor is not the small fry ignorant sellers. It is the powersellers with high scores on eBay who get away with murder. eBay is wrapped around their little finger. They are the ones making the money and trying to stop them is difficult since both eBay and Paypal protect them. Makes us sick!

    The worst offender at the moment? intertrade-connection. We don’t care what actions people take against this seller. Fake Flash angel or Fake Flash Commando tactics. intertrade-connection doesn’t play by the rules, has no respect for eBay, PayPal or buyers.

    To break intertrade-connection, we need everyone to help. An FB of 27,000 is hard to crack. It has been done before, but it will not happen until everyone targets this seller! See http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs?User=intertrade-connection&Dirn=Received+by

    Private auctions and research this sellers id at this site.

    SOSFakeFlash is issuing an SOS against this seller!

  32. Sako said

    Ref luxurybabi I bought one of the fakes yesterday! I got a email from Paypal this morning saying I had been refunded 100% and the message from luxurybabi was sorry I have got no stock.

  33. Traveler said

    Never mind folks, maybe luxurybabi will nip dow the car boot sale and replenish his stock this weekend!

    Sako, too slow! These fake drives sell like hotcakes! Don’t delay, order today!

  34. Traveler said

    If you are looking for a cheap and nasty counterfeit, look no further than these following sellers:

    hotsales_2009
    chrisshri
    value-junkie
    greatprice*
    nuazam0_3
    xuexue698

    They all have 64gb DT150’s waiting to corrupt your data, lose those precious hours, weeks or months of hard work saved to them and delighted to dump all your photos or other sentimental value stuff for ever.

    With the new term just round the corner, how many students going to school, college or university are going to depend on their new flash drives?

    If anyone has bought any drives from any of these sellers, they should get test results in to the email address given at https://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/report-a-fake/ Your input is welcomed and valued by the team here at sosfakeflash and fightflashfraud. The more evidence gathered on these sellers, the better. This is your chance to help fight against the injustice we all suffer as a result of this ongoing fraud.

  35. Sako said

    @ Traveler Hahaha Maybie I should try the local car boot? (JOKE) 🙂

    SaKo

  36. Traveler said

    To Sako,

    I know of two in particular where you are guaranteed to get loads of cheap counterfeits and nobody ever bothers questioning the sellers or their goods.

    Ebay and China!!!

  37. SaKo said

    Bought one from CCLONLINE 64GB Kingston £93 And it’s Gen! 🙂 I only bought the one off luxurybabi to test if it was fake! (Evan tho I knew it was lol)

    SaKo

  38. RockDoctor said

    Sako said
    July 29, 2009 at 10:13

    @ Traveler Hahaha Maybie I should try the local car boot? (JOKE) 🙂

    Don’t forget to take a crowbar to lever open the car boot with. (JOKE)

  39. SaKo said

    RockDoctor Where I live the boots are left open! :p lol

  40. Traveler said

    Same as area I used to live. Leave car completely unlocked at all times.

    Saves thieves damaging car when nicking the stereo!

    A bit like ebay and paypal, really!

  41. SaKo said

    Another seller of Fake Kingston 64Gb I sent this to him! (I await his reply)

    Dear greatprice*,

    Just a heads up mate! If you paid less then £70 for the Kingston 64gb (Wich you have) There is a 99.99999% chance it’s a fake! Lots of sellers have been caught out by these hong kong fakes, And have suffered with negative feedback and evan kicked off eBay! If you want to check if yours are real or fake I sugest you use a programe called H2testW (Free and you can find it on Google)

    Cheers

    Paul

    – wakosako

  42. Traveler said

    pccomp2009 is offering “genuine” (not my words!)64gb DT150s from an amazing £30 start bid.

    Would you start a genuine drive of this value at that price?

    Not likely!

  43. James Greenidge said

    Though flash drive manufactuers might find their options at attacking this problem limited around the world, there’s one direct measure they can take that’s in their front yard: A caption in all their ads stating “BEWARE OF FAKE FLASH DRIVES! TEST YOURS ON OUR SITE!” or some such. Such a measure can significantly take a bite our of this memory plague. I will be be writing Kingston and Sanidisk about their taking the battle to the ad front that way.

    Jim

  44. SaKo said

    Just had a reply from luxurybabi And WOW wish my genuin Kingston 64Gb had 63.8Gb free space lol

    Dear wakosako,

    Hi paul i have already refunded your money as i listed more than i had for some reason.
    i will however explain to you that when the drive is plugged into my computer it states kingston when properties are opened. also the green drive light flashes when loading data onto the drive. also the drive shows up 63.8gb when empty.
    im sorry i dont have anymore to sell as this was just one batch i bought with a lot of other stock i bought.
    kind regards

    – luxurybabi

  45. Traveler said

    To SaKo,

    But I thought he got them at the Sunday market?

    This guy at the Sunday market sounds marvellous.

    He replenished luxurybabi’s stock and chucked in ten 64gb DT150s too?

    I take it luxurybabi is registered on ebay as a business seller then?

  46. Traveler said

    ehsanshk is another shady seller.

    Seems to be buying flash drives all the time and losing packaging and receipts. Check his feedback to see what I mean. Looks very suspicious. That 64gb San Disk has got to be counterfeit.

  47. SaKo said

    Yes when you lie it’s advised to keep to the same story 🙂

  48. SaKo said

    More from luxurybabi

    Dear wakosako,

    Hi i have contacted all of my buyers and told them that the drives may not be the real ones and offered every one a refund if they wish. i also told them that they are welcome to keep them if they are happy with them and offered a £5.00 discount as they in my mind still offer great value for money at the price they are at
    they still have 64gb or very very close to that as i have already filled one up..
    kind regards

    – luxurybabi

  49. luxurybabi said

    I think naming someone on here before they can see by my feedback that i do not normally sell this type of goods is wrong and a deflamation of character. for all you boring dweebs out there i did not buy mine from a car boot sale as i do not go to them. This is the first time i have sold anything like this and obviously will not sell anymore due to finding out that i was sold crap basically.
    i reckon most of you have nothing better to do than sit in front of a computer all day and talk about absolute crap.
    i am an honest ebayer and was caught out by thinking i was getting a bargain and the idea of making a bit of profit however small it may have been was too tempting for anyone in serious debt.
    As for sako and you traveler taking the piss out of me for giving him a refund, at least i gave him a refund and anyone else that wants one. also traveler i did not knowingly sell these as fakes and yes they were brand new and sealed as i was led to believe. i am not a new fake seller like you are saying i am. I was an innocent person caught out by some idiot on a market not boot sale. if i see him again which i am hoping on sunday he will be eating these for his breakfast. so all of you shut up about me being a fake seller

  50. luxurybabi said

    Further to what fightflashfraud said i will be refunding everyone who purchased the drives from me.

 
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