Counterfeit, Fake USB Flash Drives on eBay

I have become a victim of fraud on eBay and you could easily become a victim as well. In good faith, I purchased what was advertised as a 32GB Kingston DataTraveler 150 USB flash drive. Upon receiving it, I discovered that it was in fact a counterfeit drive. How did I find this out? There were several telltale outward signs, but the clincher was running a test on the flash drive using the program H2testw v1.4. The website is in German, but you can use Google to translate it. The program itself is in English or German.

The program will provide output such as this…

The media is likely to be defective.
235.9 MByte OK (483200 sectors)
31.0 GByte DATA LOST (65020032 sectors)
Details:4.3 GByte overwritten (9074784 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors) 26.6 GByte corrupted (55945248 sectors) 3 KByte aliased memory (6 sectors) First error at offset: 0x000000000ebf0000 Expected: 0x000000000ebf0000 Found: 0x00000000aa55aa55 H2testw version 1.3 Writing speed: 9.05 MByte/s Reading speed: 7.66 MByte/s H2testw v1.4

You can see from the program output that my "32GB" flash drive is in fact a 256MB chip that has been falsified to indicate 32GB capacity. What happens when you use the drive is that any files put on the drive that exceed the 256MB limit, are not really on the drive and could result in massive loss of data if you were to believe that you actually had a 32GB flash drive.

The other telltale signs of it being counterfeit were as follows...

• The case was really flimsy feeling and when squeezed moderately, creaked and felt like it was going to crush easily
• There was no laser etching identification on the USB plug. Of course, there would be no way to check this unless you could examine the flash drive before purchase, which of course is not possible when buying from an eBay merchant.
• The LED activity light was non-functioning.
• The blister-pack packaging did not have a real UPC code, serial number or any other "official" signs of authenticity.

I immediately filed a dispute and escalated it immediately to a claim with PayPal. This incident also points out how much safer it is to use a real Credit Card when making purchases. Using a Credit Card makes the process of disputing a charge so much easier then going through the hoops that PayPal makes you go through.

If you are considering buying a flash drive on eBay because the prices are too good to be true, think again. I'd venture to guess that the vast majority of Kingston flash drives being offered on eBay right now are fakes.

Here are some other sites to visit to learn more about counterfeit flash drives being sold on eBay...

• http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/
• http://reviews.ebay.com/BEWARE-of-FAKE-16GB-32GB-64GB-USB-Flash-Drives-on-eBay_W0QQugidZ10000000001236200

Here is what the packaging looked like for the drive I bought...