Are Fake USB Storage Devices Still Around in 2022?

[@AtomicShrimp]

*Testing These Devices* - If you want to see an in-depth electronic test of a scam device like this one, check out this #KrazyKen video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/lYrVZ3aXgNinkNk *NEWS* This scam is also happening with devices of much smaller claimed capacity - take a look at this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gJi6faWdntBqa5I& *Typo* At 1:10 I wrote 'tb' when I meant to write 'TB'. A lower case b would indicate bits rather than bytes. This is not, incidentally, related to the mismatch of real/claimed capacity of the device. *The Chocolate Bar* - Yes, it was most probably fine. 'Most probably' doesn't work for me; I generally try to cultivate an approach where there no trust is granted until there is a reason to grant trust. I have no reason to begin trusting that this unsolicited, undocumented, untraced package that turned up on my doorstep out of the blue in apparently-Amazon-looking packaging, has actually ever been near Amazon. Yes, I am probably being overcautious. The chocolate bar was most likely a completely ordinary chocolate bar, but I have no reason to throw out all caution here. PS, there's no point telling/begging/cajoling me to eat it. I already disposed of it before you watched this video. *USB C / USB 3* - Yes, I am aware these are not synonyms. I was expecting to open the device and find a USB type C connector soldered internally by 4 wires to pins providing an internal USB 1.1 interface as in the video linked below (which configuration would not possibly support USB 3) *This is why I said 'MAYBE'* the presence of a native USB type C indicates USB 3 functionality. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fne8ZpuaZ5xmoqs

[@kinn1647]

I always use Asda they constantly update there prices to be competitive even when i worked at maplin. Asda where still cheaper and always legit. 👍

[@Sassy_roses]

@Atomic Shrimp I wish that you did this video alot sooner as I brought one of these same drives to then find it had a SD card that I thought was legit as it had Samsung written on it and then plugged it into a connector that then could plug into my phone to have everything wiped off my phone and everything deleted. I then took it into a phone shop here in Australia and was told that it was a fake hard drive and that it had stolen all my details and put a virus and deleted everything on it plus if I had plugged it in to my computer that it would of done the same thing. I had to then notify my bank and cancel all my bank cards and they then told me just to be safe that I needed to close that account and open up another bank account. Wasn't until later I rubbed on the writing to find out it was just written on with permanent texta which is a marker pen.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Oof. Sorry to hear about that.

[@dogwalker666]

Indeed that’s what I understood you to say.

[@AtomicShrimp]

@@thehulkamaniabrother2.089 why are you telling me this?

[@kip258]

You know the device is legitimate when it's being sold by a brand called Dgfsfgfsghferhefyhedr, which is definitely a real name and not someone mashing their keyboard!

[@LyingSecret]

That's the name they typed when they found a 2TB USB drive for £4.99, and found it had corrupted all their files, then collapsed on their keyboard.

[@AtomicShrimp]

This product was brought to you by Keysmash Enterprises

[@MajinWamu]

I couldn't stop laughing after reading this comment. Thank you so much for the extra entertainment.

[@grbadalamenti]

@@AtomicShrimp That company really needs some marketing to boost their sales. Can you help them out?

[@buckrodgers1162]

@@AtomicShrimp, And here I thought it was made by 'Random acts of Cat on Keyboard'.

[@W1ldTangent]

I've had a large amount of people that have come to me, the "computer expert" they know, with a strange USB device claiming TBs of capacity that's losing their files and wanting an explanation. And the number of those who've actually gotten angry at me and called me a liar ("oh the computer expert just doesn't want to admit they're wrong"), or an idiot ("see, look it says so right here in properties, even your computer says so") after I've explained this scam is astounding.

[@Fanta....]

Some people are too dumb for their own good. Its a shame there aren't more natural predators to remove them from the gene pool.

[@gblargg]

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” - Mark Twain.

[@TheInator1234]

“It’s easier to fool someone, than to convince them they’ve been fooled”

[@kalpaucjusz8741]

I have it with counterfeit USB sticks, micro sd cards, smartphones, and recently I got a lot of HDMI to USB-A cables for some reason. And yes. It's often my fault.

[@personanongratis]

That's why the scams work! There are always gullible people!

[@ChengTeoh]

That case must taste pretty bland without any seasoning.

[@PotatoMC1]

and the hot glue? You don't consider that seasoning? Amateur.

[@spyscy]

Would have tasted better with a spinning disk as advertised 😒

[@skug978]

More appetising than a Fray Bentos Steak & Kidney pie though.

[@olivier2553]

It would have benefited from a splash of olive oil!

[@grbadalamenti]

Lacks butter and garlic! Back to the kitchen it goes

[@MissMystery1412]

I hate that my reaction to that brushing scam was “ooh, free chocolate!” and not your more reasonable one of “hm, this seems suspicious and unsafe”

[@madfisch473]

the chocolate looked so yummy 🤤

[@ryukomatoi9435]

My first thought: "Oh how nice of Amazon to send some compensation for this whole ordeal."

[@emilsingapurcan8054]

I think we can all agree that we are way too easily manipulated by yummies

[@ryukomatoi9435]

@Carl Gunderson Okay, so what?

[@drhank33y]

My reaction was basically "THEY FUCKING LACED THE CHOCOLATE WITH POISON".. lol. Because the seller was angry with the refund and lost money, they send a chocolate as a "sorry gift", but instead laced it with something vile so you would get sick. My second thought was "oh that chocolate must be fake too", probably some chinese knockoff brand using the cheapest ingredients and in some cases using not even edible stuff, because that would be the cheapest way to knock something off..

[@jafizzle95]

The timing on this video is quite amazing. I work IT and last night, not even 12 hours ago I encountered my first fake 2TB flash drive that one of our customers dropped off with their desktop computer. They needed a backup of their computer's SSD because they were in the process of upgrading their machines from Windows 7. I was immediately suspicious and remembered your previous videos on this topic. I went ahead and attempted to run the backup because I thought there might be a chance it was real. I'd heard of 1TB micro SD cards after all, and I didn't have the time to run H2TestW to verify this one and just didn't Google around to see what I could find out about this one. Well, the backup "succeeded" but the verification step failed, which is pretty much what I expected. Come to find out that the day shift already tried backing up to it and said that it failed for them as well. I sent my boss and fellow technicians an email educating them about fake flash drives.

[@spadaacca]

I know your mother.

[@imaginitivity7853]

Oh crap, is this 1TB thumb drive I've got a scam? God dammit why isn't Amazon legally held to account for allowing this stuff to be sold

[@My_Old_YT_Account]

​​@@imaginitivity7853some are real, as said in the comment you can verify it with H2TestW

[@peterjf7723]

My stepson fell for a scam that was claiming to be selling 2Tb external drives for £35.00. I told him it was a scam and to cancel the order. Before he could do that he had notification from eBay that they were refunding his money and the seller had been removed for fraud. This was about ten years ago.

[@josephcontreras8930]

I only buy drives and ssds from brick motor stores where I can read and look at them and return them if needled

[@JayboCorp.2014]

@@josephcontreras8930: Exactly. It's also easy when you can look up a brand and see what pops up.

[@sneersh9107]

Lmao 2TB 10 years ago? Would've been an insane deal if that was real

[@user-is7xs1mr9y]

@@sneersh9107 I remember seeing an Alienware PC at a store back in 2011 with 1TB hard drive and my head exploded lol.

[@JayboCorp.2014]

@@user-is7xs1mr9y: Alien's a damn good brand. Love their old ads (in fact I still have one in one of my old Game Informer magazines) I should see what they've been doing since the 2000's and early 2010's.

[@xsgt_silverx]

The brushing part of it is kinda scary, because I always hear, read or see it to people happening but never to myself. Thanks for educating people that scammers will be scammers until the end of time.

[@vgamesx1]

I had it happen once, never knew it was a thing though, I ordered some solar panel junction boxes and randomly about a week later got another one, although it was addressed to someone else, but I was really confused and support just told me to keep it.

[@ferrumignis]

@@vgamesx1 I randomly received a shower head (quite a nice one, all metal for integrated shower which I sadly don't have) and spent quite a while with Amazon trying to explain the situation. They got stuck at the part on their script where they ask for my order number, went round in circles for ages stating I hadn't ordered it, so they said perhaps someone else in my house had etc... Was very frustrating but ultimately told me to keep it.

[@0error.389]

That's not brushing, that's just a company error. Brushing is when you get a product from a company you've never ordered from before so they can use your name to make a fake review. There's no way they can make a fake review like that.

[@xsgt_silverx]

@@0error.389 You watched the video, right? He said he never ordered the Milka chocolate. Amazon won’t randomly ship out chocolate because you leave them a message that one of the items you bought is a scam.

[@Hayden2447]

@@xsgt_silverx Yes but it was explained brushing happens when your details are made to make a fake account and orders something to leave a review on it, a simple mistake on an item going to the wrong address like in the first reply is not that.

[@Aalienik]

"I can't show you the shipping label, cause obviously that's got all my details on it" I really expected this sentence to continue with: You know, the kind of details....

[@AtomicShrimp]

You're right. Totally missed a trick there!

[@hyper_lynx]

Just imagine it was left that way on purpose to have us reinforce the lesson without beating up over the head with it

[@AtomicShrimp]

@@Littlewing6was9 what barcode?

[@aserta]

@@Littlewing6was9 That's an ident of the package type. In this case, it means exactly what's written under it. "LS1"

[@jwenting]

@@Littlewing6was9 yes, the barcode you did see was the one for the packaging itself, it allows the automated packing machines to recognise what box is loaded. The barcodes with the product, vendor, and recipient data are on the other side with the shipping label (and inside with the shipping manifest).

[@Keshlynne]

I'm glad you mentioned that these can even sneak into B&M stores. My brother was so frustrated when he bought a "2TB drive" for $50 from a little shop in our local mall. He thought he got a good deal. Fortunately, he didn't lose any files because he double backs everything up, but he was so pissed when he realized the flash drive was just deleting the files he was trying to put on it. He did take it back to the store and they gave him a full refund. The store had just taken the item off the market because they were getting so many complaints and returns. It's one of those small curio shop type stores, so maybe they got scammed, too, unfortunately.

[@TheEudaemonicPlague]

That's good reason not to buy your tech at such a place--they don't have to be in on the scam to be selling scam items. It also pays to keep an eye on what the legit devices sell for...and not buy anything too good to be true.

[@Kapi.23]

Back in the golden era of hardware (around 2008) I was a member of the largest community of pc enthusiasts in south America. A guy who had staff privilege was a little too excited about a bargain of a 128gb USB flash drive on dealextreme. He bought it and got a fake,but denied it for years, because he was an engineer who loved to flaunt his knowledge around the website. One of the other guys who jumped in for the deal, got an USB male adapter with hot glue and some washers for weight. And it wasn't cheap either, they spent like 60usd each. I see some things still the same

[@Zanthum]

Important word of warning that was slightly glossed over: some of these fake storage scams also come pre-loaded with a malicious payload that infects your PC on connection and in some cases bricks your OS install. As far as I remember it only affects Windows PCs so far.

[@mantrox]

Doing that would be extremely stupid for a scammer who's after your money. They want you to buy it, put it in your computer, check that the storage shows "legit" and not realise something's wrong until much later. What would they gain by bricking your machine?

[@BladeTheGabite]

Let's be honest; they probably wouldn't brick a PC, but I wouldn't put it past them to put a "oh no your files are encrypted pay me in crypto to get it back" type of ransomware

[@Murgoh]

@@mantrox Bricking might of course result from poorly written malware that instead of it's intended purpose ends up corrupting the computer.

[@RalphInRalphWorld]

@@mantrox Cryptolockers are pretty lucrative, and an external drive is likely to be shared between computers. They can also make it hide on your machine and trigger after a period of time.

[@CaptainPupu]

It's a possibility, but it's pretty rare. It's a scam but not a cyber attack. 95% of time it's safe.

[@Jacob_Clarke]

Amazon really should hold their sellers to a higher standard.

[@Salsajaman]

There are nearly 10 million sellers on Amazon. Idk how you'd go about checking them all.

[@JustinKoenigSilica]

@@Salsajaman their fault for having an automatic approval system.

[@thebeast12333]

They give out refunds easily so I think that balances it out.

[@AnthonyWabo]

@@JustinKoenigSilica what about the automated no questions asked refund system though?

[@dogwalker666]

@@Salsajaman that's a their problem they make enough money, It wouldn't be too hard if they really wanted too.

[@xxnoxx-xp5bl]

My GF ordered one of these for me when we were living apart during lockdown. I was less annoyed at having a useless drive in my hands and more angry that someone had tricked her and spoilt an otherwise kind gesture. It was obviously a fake from weight alone, but I did manage to find some software that let me see what shortage was actually on the card inside. It was 32GB (enough so that you initially might think data is transferring), minus whatever software is used to trick the operating system.

[@NotALotOfColonial_SpaghettiToG]

​@@MrLTiger problem is, if you have to do something like back up a shitton of data that 32 gigabytes can fill up a LOT faster than you think, and I wouldn't trust even the 32gb models of these fake storage devices because they're unlikely to have backup volumes in case of corruptions.

[@ihave7sacks]

@@MrLTiger It kind of is, unless you only move around the occasional movie file

[@AidenOcelot]

@@MrLTiger Remember that the device could be QOC rejects. with damaged components, so any data could completely disappear

[@xxnoxx-xp5bl]

@@MrLTiger It is when you have 2TB of data...

[@julian5956]

@@xxnoxx-xp5bl also, do we know the drive will assign the data to the real 32gb first? Could windows assign data to the fake part first - still losing data even if less than 32gb stored.

[@sneckie]

One thing that might have been useful for those who commented on the original video saying "just buy from Amazon" or stuff like that is a section where you explain how you identify what Amazon listings are fake and how they compare with real ones. Some people lack the technical background required to intuit what is and is not suspicious.

[@TheEudaemonicPlague]

That's a good point. The reason I never get burned, is I know what's possible, and how much it should cost. Plus, I always check the negative reviews...I've dodged plenty of junk just doing that.

[@Aickelodeon]

When you mentioned the "brushing scam" I just had to tell my Mom and Grandma. Every. single. time they order _anything_ from Amazon they're victims of these cheap sellers taking the info from their orders and spending their money on the site in their name. They did so with my grandma when they order some "therapeutic" pillow but it was via her account, and for my mom it was purchasing the via Amazon Prime, which came under my sister's name, which makes no sense because she's a minor and can't order for herself,, which then my mom had to call Amazon support because it _kept_ happening even when she hadn't ordered anything from Amazon, so this was a back-and-forth of my mom explaining to support nobody in the house could've ordered these things because the two other non-Amazon users were 6th grade and an infant... which then promptly led to her cussing the support guy out because they just stuck to their script and weren't helpful in her case. This kept happening but I never knew what to call it, now I know. Thank you, Shrimp!

[@RT-qd8yl]

That's why these companies need physical addresses you can go to and physically confront the support staff.

[@GrandHighGamer]

@@RT-qd8yl This is management's fault more than support staff who are likely poorly paid, held to really strict standards of what they can even discuss or how they can respond, and likely have extremely rough quotas to meet (if the rest of amazon is anything to go off of). There's no way the upper levels of the company don't understand brushing and paying for reviews are a thing, they just refuse to tackle it meaningfully.

[@mobilemarshall]

@@GrandHighGamer They probably benefit from the boost in numbers it causes, so they have no real motivation to stop it unless it causes bad pr, which it doesn't because people generally don't mind receiving free stuff.

[@Scum42]

I have never heard of "brushing" before, but I'm incredibly thankful you mentioned it in this video because I would have without a doubt simply assumed a package like that was an error and would have been happy to get some small cheap thing for free. I don't think it has happened to me in the past - I don't remember getting anything like that - but honestly it might have. If it does happen in the future, I will be sure to report it.

[@timl.b.2095]

I got a whole bunch of seed packets, which were cheap, but real. And I got a light to go in a closet that needed to be hardwired. I pitched the latter. Still have the seeds, may pitch them. I did contact Amazon, and they said they would make sure I didn't receive any more like this, and I haven't. Also, I haven't used Amazon in a long time, because Bezos, union busting, etc.

[@glinkgo]

@@timl.b.2095 you should ditch the seeds! They may be invasive plants :/

[@SamDoesStuff]

I once received anti pet scratching plastic pad things and a high frequency dog bark stopper thing once. Never ordered it, very strange.

[@pyrojinn]

Usually if you don't see a brand, wrong storage listing(2Tb is not exactly 2000Gb), and the price is too good to be true, that's a scam. Well you may still get scammed, but watching atomicshrimp videos and others on KZbin helped.

[@sihamhamda47]

There are also many scam flash storages that has a mis-typed famous brand name (such as SAMSNUG instead of SAMSUNG, TOSHIDA instead of TOSHIBA, etc.) and any unnoticed person can also trapped in that scam because they think that it's genuine

[@moosetwin]

I would like to add - drives are often also labelled as 2048Gb.

[@Xnoob545]

I think you mean TB and GB (terabytes and gigabytes) and not Tb and Gb (terabits and gigabits) Also, 2000GB *IS* exactly 2TB

[@Xnoob545]

@@MrLTiger no they don't They say TB, not Tb 1Tb is 8 times smaller than 1TB also 2TB *IS* 2 trillion bytes

[@ShaCaro]

@@Xnoob545 except not really because 2TB is 2048GB.

[@rocbolt]

I wanted a simple green laser pointer for work- geez apparently that section on Amazon is brushing scam central. Tons of the laser pointer entries all contain reviews for other random junk like stickers or toys, I put a few on my ‘saved for later’ cart and saw item pictures change to other random stuff every other day. There is usually a “report incorrect information” link on Amazon pages but all those were missing that, what a coincidence

[@jakegarrett8109]

Careful with those, most exceed safe limits for laser pointing. Also green uses IR pumping (harmful light you can't see, so unfortunately you go blind without ever noticing the light), and the cheap ones usually have terrible IR filters in them so sure you might get 5mW of useful light (typically its more than that), but then you might get 80mW of invisible yet still just as dangerous IR light radiation. I have fun with lasers that are strong enough you see the beams in broad daylight and that will very quickly set a T-shirt on fire, so not the best for pointing for obvious reasons (would either set the board on fire, or probably burn all the pixels on a monitor out, also blind everyone in the room from the intense reflection...), and those start at like $50 to the point they are so cheap even the safety glasses cost more (oh yeah, and pretty much all the cheap laser safety glasses are a scam and don't even block half the wavelength rated, which means you can still not only burn your retinas out instantly but you can still see the beam blasting through it...)

[@mcb187]

StyroPyro moment

[@AlienZizi]

@@jakegarrett8109 this is very troubling information that i have no reason to worry about (dont need or want laser pointers), but i will.

[@camojoe83]

Hey @Jake Garrett , did you know the sun can burn your skin off? Did you know that occasionally cars drift off their travel path and hit things they aren't supposed to? Did you know that sometimes food can be full of lethal pathogens? Did you know that a meteorite could just brain you at any time? Did you know that sometimes lightning hits people? Dangerous things are dangerous, bruhv. No surprises there.

[@Dell-ol6hb]

Be careful with those lasers some are far beyond the legal limit of power output and could blind you

[@russelllukenbill]

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident". ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

[@unwavering_sightseer7818]

Doing your research doesn't mean the information you have obtained is factually correct. By doing research like this, you can see results with proof to back up your claim. Thanks for your time and effort.

[@MuchWhittering]

I bought one of these (not 2TB, a more reasonable size) in like 2016. Didn't realise it was one of these scams until I started watching your videos, I assumed it was just faulty. Lost a fair bit of data because I stupidly, after copying across data from the smaller drive I was upgrading from, deleted it from the source drive.

[@caskwith]

Me too, I bought a branded SD card from Amazon themselves and it turned out to be fake but I didn't realise until much later because while it was branded as 32gb, it actually had 4gb of usable storage and for months I never exceeded 4gb and so it worked fine. It wasn't noticed until I loaded it up with videos for my table to take on holiday and nearly all were unwatchable.

[@TheWeardale1]

🤣😂🤣

[@MuchWhittering]

By the way I should clarify on this, I stopped using it pretty quickly after getting it, once I lost a huge amount of data. It's just that, at the time, I assumed it was faulty. I didn't know these scams were a thing back then.

[@psuedonym9999]

I brought one of these types of SD cards in September 2019 so I had more space for a new game on my Nintendo Switch. I was copying over all of the files, but when I noticed that not everything was there on the destination card, I made sure not to delete the files from where I was copying from. Thankfully. Otherwise, there would have been a headhunt.

[@AzureKite]

Wait I just realized that one of my old SD cards that kept corrupting files and erasing stuff I added might have been a fake one as well.

[@AntoniTolwinski]

Thank you for spreading awareness on this - the idea of people losing personal memories such as irreplaceable archival footage is just devastating... one of the most horrible scams for sure.

[@GrandHighGamer]

FYI: Anyone storing irreplaceable data on a single storage device is asking to lose it. They don't deserve that, but it's essentially a gamble that the storage doesn't just fail at random due to any number of causes. Heck, they'd be better off keeping it on three devices with at least one of them being in a different physical location (or on the cloud) so your family photos don't go bye-bye if there's a flood or a house fire. That's not something most people are going to do, so at least keep a copy on Dropbox or a Google Drive too. Relying on a single means of storage is just rolling the dice as to whether you end up miserable down the line because your data is just gone at random.

[@AntoniTolwinski]

@@GrandHighGamer Not exactly a pleasant reality check... but a necessary one, I think. I try not to be paranoid since my OCD already supplies me with enough of that as it is, and despite feeling "secure" by having important memories stored on 2 or 3 devices... your point about storing them on the cloud is a very solid one. Cheers for chipping in, I will undoubtedly keep your words in mind when doing another stressful but necessary transfer.

[@BenHeckHacks]

Rubbing alcohol doesn't dissolve hot glue, it merely causes it to release its grip.

[@femkeyt2635]

See you in like a year when more people are still convinced that cheap 2TB thumb drives are a thing. Seriously though, thanks again for making a video like this. It really sucks that it's necessary but there are always gonna be scammers I guess :(

[@HotelPapa100]

Hot glue is PP base AFAIK. Little chance to touch it with any solvent. What solvents MAY do, though, is make the adhesion break down between substrate and glue. I know it works at my workplace when thermoplastic polyurethane sticks to mold surfaces. ETA: The basis is EVA, apparently. Prone to hydrolysis. You may have chance breaking it down in boiling water.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Thank you - that's easy enough to try (and boiling it should work now that I have pan-seared the outside!)

[@fgbhrl4907]

@@AtomicShrimp I would say my experience is IPA works -- it's not dramatic, but it seems to seep into the gap between the glue and item, and loosen the bond. I typically use hot glue* as a temporary way to affix wires to PCBs for debugging.

[@HotelPapa100]

@@AtomicShrimp Now that you have tho core out I'd try first to grab the glob with forceps and see if releasing adhesion with solvent works (I think it makes the hydrogen bonds break down). That would make thE glob come out cleanly in one piece. Dissolving glues is usually messy. Acrylates are worst, which DO soften and swell in water but are awfully messy to remove completely. (The wonder potion for acrylates, if you ever have the problem: Essential oils from orange peel. big fire hazard, though)

[@tomsixsix]

@@fgbhrl4907 IPA definitely breaks down hot glue. It's both useful and annoying in that respect.

[@Laralinda]

@@AtomicShrimp Maybe freezing is also worth a try, the glue shrinks a bit and becomes brittle so that it can come off all at once.

[@BlackDroid003]

I always find "unexpected food" weird. Even if it would be legitimate, as a "gift" alongside the order, if you for example buy some high quality DIY (like some chap making hardware with custom PCBs and stuff). It's just.. Odd. I don't want to eat it because of obvious concerns, but then I feel bad for disposing of it.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, my brain kept saying 'But it's chocolate! But it's sealed! But it looks like it came direct from Amazon stock!', but I think this is a case of 'shut up brain, I'll buy you a bar of chocolate instead of this unsolicited one'

[@theunknown4834]

@@AtomicShrimp Sounds so much like eva and her sticks/stones

[@applegal3058]

​@@theunknown4834 haha!

[@Vollification]

@@AtomicShrimp Better safe then sorry. People selling these fake thingies are criminals. I wouldn't put it past them to seek some form of revenge :(

[@jamesgodden3]

I wouldn’t feel too bad about it for me, my council runs a compost bin service for food waste, yes chocolate will take a while to discard and the plastic practically never will, but chocolate still will and the plastic wrap existed already.

[@JIL713]

Amazing how with that giant metal casing, only like 10-15% of it or less is filled with anything. And what is mostly filled in there is not tech, but hot glue!

[@Snufflegrunt]

Wow, a Samsung NC10. That takes me back! Used one of those for random bits and bobs many years ago. It used to have quite a dedicated community. Glad to see one still in use!

[@damustermann]

I shared your videos so often as the 'tech guy' always getting asked about these scams. Thanks for your service, saved me countless hours of explaining :)

[@yeah.cheers]

It's depressing how insistent people are on believing dodgy ebay listings.

[@nequastar1826]

I don’t know if ignorance is an excuse at this point, there’s so much info online about it, it’s just stupidity after a certain point

[@enmunate]

It’s not not to want to trust Amazon.

[@xr6lad]

It depressing how sheep like people are at ignoring many things. I mean Amazon is full of scams and is more interested in making money than stopping them (unless found out). KZbin as well, cracks down on people making certain political comments but has no issue showing scam adverts and obviously dodgy videos on some channels.

[@kasparroosalu]

People consider themselves protagonists of the movie that is their life. So they find it outrageous and improbable that they would fall victim to anything really. Car accident, disease, disasters - impossible. Low IQ scammed in such a mundane task as ordering a flash drive from the internet - why that's outrageous.

[@HmmmmmLemmeThinkNo]

​@@nequastar1826 i'm on my phone 50+ hours a week, screwing around on social media or watching stuff on here, and I had no idea. i'd be suspicious of any TB drive under $70, and i'd check through reviews as I always do, but I could easily have fallen prey to this, bc it seems reasonable that storage would be getting cheaper. You have to be in certain spheres of influence to hear about it, I guess.

[@19822andy]

I have a rule of thumb that has steered me clear of scams up until now which is "If it seems too good to be true it probably is" A kind of played out old saying but it is very sage advice.

[@r3bs]

True.

[@jwenting]

another one: Chinese junk is junk. Any Chinese drop company, especially with autogenerated names like the one shown, are bound to be bad actors.

[@lasskinn474]

the real problem is when the listings just in the kinda good deal region. or full.

[@19822andy]

@@lasskinn474 Scammers won't list things for reasonable prices. You would rather buy something from someone reputable if you are paying a reasonable price. The scammers want the gullible so will always list something for ridiculously cheap.

[@spyscy]

The information at 0:49 is absolutely insane to me!!! I did not know that, I really appreciate you sharing this!!! I’ll be sure to be cautious when purchasing external memory

[@jessequeen4550]

Thanks to your video from last year I was able to stop my friend from buying a scam drive, so thank you for the work you’re doing to help people who otherwise wouldn’t know any better

[@JackedThor-so]

Legit - thank you for making this video! The discussions about fake drives with too-good-to-be-true storage ammounts and prices made me double check a recent purchase and surprise surprise, it was a 30 something gig thumb drive pretending to be a 1 TB drive. Funny thing, I FORMATTED the drive before packaging it for return and, having all data removed from it, it showed up as still having 1.25 MB of data on it - which it doesn't. I'm incredibly disappointed that this happened especially since it was a sponsored product pushed to the very top of the search results.

[@SchuckPipe]

The Saturday morning ritual of a lye-in, coffee and whatever random information Atomic Shrimp has uploaded for us. I love it 🤣

[@swanningabout]

Lye as in sodium hydroxide?

[@fennecfoxfanatic]

@@swanningabout the best ingredient for any cooking recipe.

[@SchuckPipe]

@@swanningabout haha. I guess so 🤣

[@raraavis7782]

I always struggle with the correct spelling of these words as well. Lye-ing, lying, lay-in, lieing? Lie-in? Lol. More coffee needed 😅

[@Aureus_]

Same mate 😂😂😂

[@GHa_teaandstuff]

At 5:03 I wondered if you were starting a new series: "Weird Tech in a Pan".

[@lenaamundsen1938]

Underappreciated comment!! Hilarious!!

[@lunab541]

That should be a tagline in the channel's banner

[@1kreature]

There has been a misunderstanding here. The spirits do not dissolve hot glue, it disrupts the bond between the glue and other stuff, especially metal. This means that as the spirits get in contact with the interface between the glue and the glued, the bond will slip and you can slide the unit out after jiggling a bit to let the spirits wick into the already loosened sections.

[@MetalheadAndNerd]

This didn't work either when I tried it. Did you test it or are you just repeating what you read somewhere else?

[@BogusNoise]

​@@MetalheadAndNerd Isopropyl alcohol is the one to use, I've been using it for years for this. The Servisol one in a spray can will do it, just aim the nozzle on the glue and after a few drops the glue will be easy to remove. Also dissolves some marker pen ink, really useful stuff!

[@LilacMonarch]

if spirits are involved, it might be ectoplasm. better call the ghostbusters before something worse happens

[@kirilichushanka1357]

There is a difference in methanol and isopropyl alcohol, their polarity for one.

[@_--_--_]

@@MetalheadAndNerd Use IPA, 90% or more works best. Literally pops off within seconds depending on the material its bonded to, sometimes needs to soak for half a minute. But it does reliably break the bond and remove hot glue without any residues. However it works best with the normal high temp hot glue, the weird low temp mushy soft stuff can still be a bit annoying.

[@lokithedark1]

These devices aren't scams. The manufacturers are increasing storage capacity via a Beige expanding file transfer...

[@stylis666]

I actually found out how that works. You search for the files you want, then put them in a folder with the same name you searched the files with, and then delete all the files with that name that are outside your folder. Magically gave my hard drive more storage! How was I to know that I was still looking at the search results and I didn't copy, but move, and then I deleted everything XD I was drunk, okay! :p

[@VintageToiletsRock]

Yeah, all files are safely stored at /dev/null so we're all good!

[@DirkGently1972]

Amazon, from your example, really should be forced to take more responsibility of who and what is being sold on their marketplace, especially if it is being used to steal personal information! The reporting system for obvious fakes/ knock-off goods is next to useless or non-existent in some cases and should be an instant ‘report item’ button on the items listing.

[@CommandoBlack123]

Lol, no. And no for a lot of reasons.

[@CWINDOWSsystem32]

That would only work if everyone was completely honest and acted in good faith. Which, as evidenced by the existence of these scams, isn't the case.

[@Kitsunelanie]

"Kinda funny how everything in this channel turns into a cooking video, isn't it?" -- A pedant might point out "You've never cooked a scammer!" but the truth there is is that you make a fine roast out of them, Mr. Shrimp.

[@captaintsubasa7387]

transcendent, my leige

[@GuyFromJupiter]

So a shrimp DID fry this rice!

[@sarahskileth6925]

I'd actually keep the adapter and throw out the microSD EDIT: nevermind, I'd throw it out completely and take the case like you did

[@Kaeltis]

Not a chemist, but afaik Methylated Spirits is mostly Ethanol (drinking alcohol), with some added chemicals, one of them being Methanol. Pure Methanol would be a lot more toxic when ingested or absorbed through the skin. The one you need to remove hot glue is indeed Isopropyl alcohol / Isopropanol (other solvents might work as well). Most products labeled rubbing alcohol use this solvent. Update: after some more research it seems the Isopropanol doesn’t dissolve the hot glue itself, but weakens the bonds between the glue and the material it’s on, so it might not work in all cases.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Rubbing alcohol doesn't really seem to be a thing here in the UK. I think the closest equivalent product (in terms of usage) is called 'surgical spirit', but that is typically also methanol/ethanol

[@dominicwehrmann8515]

@@AtomicShrimp some computer stores and or chemists should carry isopropanol as it can be used to clean pcb and to deep clean and disinfect tools

[@alexstone691]

@@AtomicShrimp note that what they said is not true! You don't need ispropyl It's is not available here in Serbia but ethanol is and cheaply and it works wonders for hot glue removal just need to soak the edges But it says 70% ethanol and nothing about methanol

[@drunkenhobo5039]

The solvent to all problems is acetone. That'll eat through most solvents... and quite a few plastics, so be careful.

[@raraavis7782]

I had no idea, Isopropyl alcohol removes hot glue! That's good to know. In Germany, you can buy liter bottles of the stuff for maybe 3€ in every drugstore and hardware store. Interesting, that the Brits seem to use some other form of alcohol for household purposes.

[@somberlight]

the probability of you getting a deal of a lifetime is inversely relative to the level of irritation you feel towards the pricepoint the item is sold in. if the price doesnt annoy you, worry.

[@Rumade]

I lost 20 pages of a book I was writing to one of these devices and it broke my heart because it had taken so much effort to conquer procrastination and write it in the first place. I nearly cried. The item in question was a thumb drive that had USB A and USB C connectors, so the hope was that I could carry files between my laptop and phone. A laptop I'd bought was faulty, and though I'd managed to hack out those pages on it, it was suffering from other issues, so I "backed up" my files to this thumb drive, and sent the laptop back for an exchange. Replacement laptop worked great... but no files on my thumb drive.

[@s0men00bb]

I've seen board replacements scams in SSD drives , and controller firmware patched to report size on the label , same thing is possible with mechanical drives too , but such scams aren't really cheap to pull it out. The most common thing is to use dumpster dived drives , or drives that were part of something else (salvaged) , repack them and sell them as brand new. Also , be aware of black stickers drives as these never were consumer sold , they are OEM drives that are / were intended to be in laptops and / or some other enclosure. You wont have warranty on them. SeaTools by Seagate HDD Sentinel and others can tell if drive is genuine and is under warranty.

[@EinkOLED]

Amazon should be doing more to prevent fraudulent products being sold on their website.

[@naverilllang]

They actually do try. If you just search for flash drives on amazon, all of the top listings will be legit, and they'll even highlight some of the best ones from reputable sellers. you generally only find these fraudulent drives by filtering for or sorting by the cheapest options.

[@rashira9610]

@@naverilllang So basically you have to be a fucking idiot to get bad drives. lol

[@lasskinn474]

@@naverilllang and who wouldn't sort by the cheapest options. fact is they don't care much for checking electronics listings. you try to sell your own brand jeans you make with your own 2 hands with your own company and that is made extremely hard to list. but go and type multicart into the search. they don't really give a f outside of fashion brands and stuff like that, the electronics side is just list whatever the f you want kind of a place with them doing basically 0 effort to curb even obviously illegal products, never mind the scams.

[@s8wc3]

Maybe validating the details of sellers would be a start.

[@jbh1404]

Maybe people should quit thinking that they're getting a $500+ item for $20.

[@Dontstopbelievingman]

Kind of glad we don't have Amazon here. Sounds about as reliable as buying tech off ebay. Thank you for this education. Its fascinating seeing how these things are done.

[@Rocky712_]

You have to scroll down quite a lot to find such fake storage drives and some common sense is usually enough to spot the fake. ebay is way worse than that.

[@Dontstopbelievingman]

@@Rocky712_ - what if you order your search results by lowest price?

[@Rocky712_]

@@Dontstopbelievingman You will get a lot of those scams then, but they are almost all one star rated or not rated as well. But as I said, common sense is more than enough to avoid this. If an offer is too good to be true, it's not real. Also buying stuff without any rating yet is rather risky unless you are certain it is legit. ebay sadly has like 50% scams, sometimes they lie about capacity or speed of a product, sometimes they give wrong shipping information. Like, I bought something from ebay, because the seller was located in Germany and I expected it to arrive within 2-3days. But nope, it was sent from China, 3 weeks on its way. Luckily the product worked though. Luckily I did not have any experience with scams yet, but you really have to check the seller and if it makes sense what you pay for this product. The issue is that some people (especially older ones) can lack seeing this suspicious offer. Always think twice or more before buying (expensive) things. Scammers will always be around...

[@PinkManGuy]

If anyone gave you a hard time for not knowing about the alcohol trick, I want to tell you it was inspiring to me. I have been taking things apart since I was old enough to speak, but I've never coded in my life until my 20's. It's refreshing to see someone who could could circles around me in language after language still have a lot of learning to do when it comes to taking apart electronics.

[@megamix5403]

It reminds me of the time I went to a bootsale and bought a "Samsung" SD card for my Switch. Luckily, it was only about 5 quid, but unluckily, it was a fake 256GB as well and I lost a good amount of game saves and data there. If you ever do a follow up vid, mate. You should do one on how to spot fake branded SD cards. You got very good content, man. Cheers.

[@thedarkemissary]

The highest you can go for less than $30 is 128GB. Anything high or cheaper and assume it's fake.

[@koftespiess]

@@thedarkemissary Pretty much. It's usually on the safe side if it's a 128gb microSD or 32gb usb storage drive. I've seen some 32gb drives be considered as counterfeits when they're legit, just really bad drives.

[@joebot86]

Pedantic comment, but the switch does not allow save data on SD cards, unless something has changed.

[@Iristallite]

@@joebot86 It doesn't.

[@eyeflaps]

I bet it wasn't even spelled right. Probably spelled "samsong" or something chinesey. Those rice people seem to do that alot.

[@ondank]

All the passage of time will do is make the claim of scammers more grandiose. As soon as 1tb thumb drive is cheap enough for a teen to buy with their pocket money the scammers will just claim their drives now contain 10tb

[@naverilllang]

Thankfully we seem to be reaching the point that such high capacity drives won't have a common use case for a very long time

[@petermichaelgreen]

I've heard that some scammers deliberately make their claims unbelievable to deter savvy customers. The scammer wants customers who either never discover the scam or at least only discover it when it's too late to seek a refund.

[@maverickbonato8164]

Haha, I was talking about it with my graphic design professor that was pretty tech savvy and I had to link him your old video for proof. I would say that once you know it you can spot them from a mile away but some of the comments prove me wrong... No wonder people STILL fall for this.

[@nicolek4076]

Another use for isopropyl alcohol is to remove the ink from Amazon delivery labels.

[@TheEudaemonicPlague]

It wouldn't work on my fountain pen ink...it's anti-counterfeit ink. You can wash part of it off, but what's left is still perfectly legible. I use it for writing down info I don't want to lose due to it getting wet...I've lost so many notes in the past, due to a drink spill, rain, or some other moisture source, that I spent extra to get this ink.

[@nicolek4076]

@@TheEudaemonicPlague I've no doubt, but if you read my comment properly, I limited the application quite considerably.

[@ThisGuyAd.]

There's curtain things I just wouldn't get from Ali or eBay. The problem is I've somehow been conditioned to not be suspicious of Amazon wares. This is a great reality check. Good job 👍🏻

[@TheEudaemonicPlague]

That's kinda sad...fakes and frauds of all sorts have been common on Amazon for years. Either you're getting lucky, or you're using something that isn't what it was sold as.

[@Inc712]

I must say mr shrimp i thoroughly enjoyed this recipe for pan seared fake 2 terabyte usbs. I shall try this recipe tomorrow night when I have the in-laws round for dinner.

[@TheXperior]

So that's what people mean when saying they fried their hard drive

[@DysnomiaATX]

I really appreciate these videos. They are tremendously helpful. Thank you for calling attention to these devices!

[@johntester6144]

Amazon really is a wasteland of resellers and dropshippers now. Wouldn't buy anything that is remotely technical from there.

[@TheFreshSpam]

Buy branded goods and your fine. Its peoples incessant attitude to want the cheapest tech with the most capability. You cant have both. If you buy cheap, expect cheap.

[@jbh1404]

The only way it'll go wrong is if you buy something that's WAY cheaper than it should be, and isn't directly fulfilled by Amazon. If you buy actual name-brand products that are priced as they should be & are sold directly by Amazon (NOT MARKETPLACE) then you're fine 99.9% of the time. It's not that bad when you have the brains to know that you're not getting a 2TB MicroSD card for $20... it's your fault if you fall for it honestly.

[@CWINDOWSsystem32]

Eh, if you use common sense you won't get scammed on Amazon or really any other marketplace.

[@RandomKSandom]

Thank you for covering this. While many scans just suck on the surface; this one is really malicious because it **will** lead to data loss. I've added this video to my playlist of other coverage of the topic.

[@WildeCard4]

No idea how this ended up in my "Recommended" but it was informative and well-edited. I hope you've managed to prevent others from falling for this scam.

[@applegal3058]

I generally try to buy expensive electronics from the company's storefront on Amazon, or go to an actual brick and mortar shop. Also look at the actual retail price that the item you're looking to buy, and get a sense of what it actually costs to buy. If something online is like drastically less than that price, that is a huge tip off that it is probably a scam. Thankfully I don't buy much online, and when I do I just stick to the company's storefront on Amazon. It's crazy that they sent you a chocolate bar to use your information as a certified purchase so they can use your information on their reviews. That's just scary that they can do that and you know that they have your information.

[@sakaraist]

As for cheap storage, even if it's genuine it's a bad idea. In todays world your data is probably one of the most irreplacable things you own while there are sales with reputable products, they're rarely significant. Take SeaGates entry level external hard drives, They go on sale frequently and sometimes at alliuringly cheap prices. They also boast some of the highest irrecoverable data failure rates within 2 years than any of the other major manufacturers products, and in the past have been shown to have used drives that failed QA for other uses, You literally may be getting reject drives. You may save $60, or $100. But you also might end up losing Terabytes of data within months to a few years. TLDR ; Cheap storage is risky, even if it's genuine. If you have important files don't bother trying to save some money and screw yourself further down the road.

[@Jhud69]

Agreed, flash storage is one of the things where you really should splurge if you care about your data at all. For most other things replacements will do.

[@kiefac]

I'm pretty sure all external hard drives are QA rejects with a SATA to USB adapter. It just depends on what level of failure the company will accept to sell it that way. Years ago I got a 3tb external drive, and only recently I shucked the drive out of it - was a business-grade Western Digital disk, and it's still kicking. I don't use it much at this point (just leaving the data on it as an archive essentially) but when I did use it, it held most of my Steam library and had ShadowPlay recordings written to it pretty often, so it got a bit of a fair shake I think

[@PalladinPoker]

@@kiefac Believe it or not, external HDDs are usually top end drives. Most of the ticket price on a hard drive is the warranty. I got a few 16TB Seagate EXOS drives for £140 each in February by shucking externals, those bad boys barely fit in my PCs 3.5" trays.

[@marcusborderlands6177]

@Toma Seagate hasn't been awful like that in over a decade lol

[@marcusborderlands6177]

@Toma what kinda job? I've put a few Seagate drives in home nas systems, probably about 30, and they are all doing fine now after maybe 4 years on average for em. Maybe my usage just isn't running em enough for the failure rates to matter Also I'm looking at backblaze's stats and Seagate drives seem totally fine there...

[@nashsok]

Re: Your point about counterfeit branded products getting mixed in with real projects: A few years back I bought a few SanDisk SD cards from Amazon only to receive counterfeits (the printing in the packaging was off and had weird spelling errors). I returned them for a refund and reordered and received yet another round of counterfeits. Repeat two more times till I gave up a and found them elsewhere. Definitely haven't shopped with them since.

[@monhi64]

Yeah the issue the sellers on Amazon can be big time scamming. That’s the issue with allowing anyone to sell products no verification

[@rashira9610]

Why I only buy storage devices from brick and mortar stores of high repute. Sure things can still go wrong, they could get a funky shipment, etc, but the odds are lower and if something does happen it's less likely for the store itself to have intentionally/knowingly sold you bad drives.

[@W1ldTangent]

Had the same experience, more than once unfortunately, both online and from brick and mortar stores. I just don't trust SD cards at all anymore, it's beyond the point of ridiculousness how many counterfeits are out there being sold by hapless retailers.

[@nightwolf6233]

This is the first time I've witnesses the cooking of fake USB storage. You've got my like!

[@JesusRocksTryPrayin]

Your channel is cool! This is the 2nd video i've seen on your channel, after the inkjet one. God bless ya, for using your talents to help folks! I mean, what isn't a scam these days.. but it is interesting and fun, seeing inside these scam businesses and products

[@silva7493]

Thank you for that! I would not have known, and that actually could be very useful. I did lose a whole lot of my incredibly valuable (to me) photo files once some years ago when I trusted a storage device I bought on Amazon. And right now I have to send a computer back to them because it's a dud. It randomly turns itself off several to many times a day. Sometimes the screen goes black and it makes awful static, crackly sounds amplified through through the speaker till I can turn it off. I've been using it since January and I have files on it I want, so I need to copy stuff and then reset it and send it back. I've already bought a SanDisk 128GB Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive and I'm about to try to figure out what to do next! I'm hoping to find some videos that might help me out.🧐🤯😄

[@mikefromwa]

Just remember, something isn't really "backed up" unless it's stored in three different places, preferably with one of them being physically off site.

[@piguyalamode164]

As someone who recently fell for this scam, I fell for it because I had no clue what a reasonable price was. This is because I have never looked at the storage market, and so when I went to amazon and saw a smattering of devices at various prices, I got tricked into thinking the "too good to be true" price is actually just the normal price because I had no context at all as to what normal looks like. I just did a quick amazon search for "usb stick", and there seems to be absolutely no relationship between price and capacity in the listings.

[@dantefox6556]

Wow I had no idea brushing was a thing. I’ve been sent “sample” products and didn’t even question it. Free razors, deodorant, etc. each package had a slip saying it was a free sample

[@wisteela]

It's amazing this is still allowed to happen. I hadn't heard of brushing before. I'd have eaten the chocolate bar after first inspecting it for signs of tampering.

[@Croz89]

1. Buy crappy scam tech off Amazon. 2. Claim refund from Amazon for crappy scam tech. 3. Receive chocolate bars from makers of crappy scam tech for brushing. 4. ??? 5. Profit (or gluttony).

[@SuburbaniteUrbanite]

“It’s been 5 minutes since this video has been posted, these items must be legitimate now!” The amount of brain rot that exist on the internet is insane.

[@Waterghosteus]

Hmmm, but this video is two days old... Is this still a problem we could face in the modern day???

[@infelsphere7526]

As a testament to what happens when you spend good money on a storage device from a brand you trust, in my case it was over a hundred dollars for a WD 1tb external HDD that I bought over five years ago, It is still plugged in and working as I write this, even after needing to pour water out of its enclosure twice due to my own stupidity. Also I bought it at a brick and mortar store instead of Amazon, although that was more personal preference back then but nowadays you'll find way more fake and/or junk storage on there so I recommend just stopping by a local electronics retailer while doing your normal shopping instead.

[@naverilllang]

Seagate, Samsung, Sansdisk, SK Hynix (why do so many of those companies' names start with S?) I've never had a poor experience getting a storage device from a reputable brand.

[@rashira9610]

I have a Seagate 2tb desk drive that I bought about 11 years ago still going strong. This thing has been dropped and knocked over while plugged in and being used. Gets a little grumpy when I try to write large files to it (probably because the drops have messed up the moving parts a little) but it still goes strong.

[@christophernuzzi2780]

I have two WD 1TB USB drives, and I've had them for years and they work flawlessly. Always stick with a reputable brand and don't trust too-good-to-be-true deals.

[@scythal]

@@naverilllang I mean... the "capital" of the technology world is **S**ilicon Valley

[@ditroia2777]

When amazon first came to Australia they had some pretty good sales. I bought a 64GB Sandisk USB C thumb drive for $9 delivered. It's not the fastest drive and does get hot but it is legit. I remember paying $150 for my first 1GB Scandisk thumb drive.

[@ihave7sacks]

My first usb drive cost me $80 and it was a 75 MB drive xD

[@Roguefem76]

Mine was $50CA and held half a Gb. I felt so cutting edge that I could save my info to a device that teeny and wear it around my neck! 😆🤓

[@vgamesx1]

Lol nice, my first was also a 1GB drive for something like $30, doesn't sound quite as crazy until you realize you can get a legit 128GB sd card for the same price these days and that was only 15-20 years ago.

[@MrDiarukia]

Mentions of tools like H2TestW should come way earlier in the video, more people need to see this.

[@RetroGamer20109]

Still relevant. I am a former IT professional who decided to try and see if an under $50 product was worth it. It wasn't. H2testw showed its true colors. They used a 64GB drive for a 2TB drive! Shocking (not really).

[@eveclark1541]

Yes the scammers are still alive and well on Amazon. we always check them now. My son just had to return a couple to Amazon. Claimed to be 512 GB. Actually only 20. Convincing price, not under priced for the real thing.

[@scottrobinson4611]

I can weigh in on the microSD issue. I worked in data recovery for 2 years, and have a wealth of experience working with microSD cards. First of all, if the microSD is not showing up when connected on its own with a standard working microSD adapter, the microSD is dead. The drive can have died in a handful of ways. 1) One that stands out to me is the way you held it to scrape off the excess glue. MicroSD cards are extremely fragile, and can crack very easily. You were holding half of the card, and applying downward pressure on the overhanging half. This might have introduced a hairline crack (usually barely visible under a microscope) that could have severed the internal connections. 2) It might have died on its own - this is caused by a controller failure 99% of the time, and isn't indicative of user error. These cards don't last forever, and controller failure is the most common way they will eventually fail. What I can guarantee is that the heat did not kill the MicroSD or its carrier board. For a start, that metal casing is a considerable thermal mass to evenly spread the heat from your skillet. But more importantly, you just wouldn't have given it enough heat for enough time to kill it. I've heat-tested microSDs before, to check what's generally safe to heat them to. I've had 330c hot air pointed at microSD cards for a minute or more with no damage to them. Heat them gradually and evenly, and they'll be fine up to 300c for a minute or two.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, I think it's possible that I damaged the card when I was peeling glue off it, but I rather suspect that the onboard microcontroller on the card, and the other one on the PCB, have both been reprogrammed to do something other than their original purpose (like, deliver malware perhaps). The exclusivity of the results shown in the truth table in this video makes me suspect this.

[@scottrobinson4611]

@@AtomicShrimp The former suggestion is quite interesting. I've never known of a microSD's embedded controller being reprogrammed on a 'hobbyist' level. It's for this reason that I suspect the microSD itself is just dead - rather than programmed in an unusual way. I've spent a lot of time working with these devices, and getting quite technical with their low-level programming, including issuing my own commands and addresses in attempts to circumvent the controller for direct NAND access, to force reset modes, change between SLC/MLC modes and so on... Unless the microSD's embedded controller is effectively disabled, and it's basically just a NAND package that relies on the custom-programmed controller on the PCB itself to do the interfacing and spoofing the capacity? I wish I'd got my hands on a drive like this while I worked there and had all my toys to investigate it with.

[@Geffro]

A few months ago we bought a microSD card that had reasonable storage for a reasonable price, maybe a little cheaper but nothing crazy (like, it was probably only $5 cheaper than the legitimate ones). I realized amazon cards were often fake but I knew I could test it, and indeed it turned out to be fake. I got a refund but the takeaway here is even reasonable storage/price cards can be fake.

[@Happigail_Adams]

It's actually possible to buy legitimate microSD cards reported as new on Amazon and still have fakes arrive. I once ordered a Samsung Evo 128GB as new on amazon, checked to make sure it was the legitimate listing and everything, and still had a convincing looking fake arrive and didn't realize it until I had written over my other data on the fake card by accident. I then reported it to Amazon and had the card replaced and a legitimate one shipped out, which works perfectly. I personally wouldn't trust microSD cards from Amazon in any capacity and instead just go to a Best Buy or Microcenter and buy a microSD card from them.

[@Sevicify]

@@Happigail_Adams That happens because for fulfilled items Amazon will normally comingle the stock of the same SKU based on their normal product barcode that has been sent in by different sellers into a shared stock pool with no tracking of who owns specific individual items inside the pool, when a customer buys an item from a fulfilled item of that SKU it will be sent from its shared stock pool with no regard of which seller provided the item so an item provided by one seller can be sent to customers of a different seller. This allows scammers to infiltrate the supply of legitimate listings fulfilled by Amazon by making their own listing of the same SKU and sending in their fake stock to be comingled, at the same time legitimate stock can also be sent out for the scammer's listing which makes them appear more legitimate. They have added counter-measures against this in the form of a custom Amazon barcode unique to the seller which the seller but unfortunately this is an optional protection that not every seller takes advantage of.

[@Airmanmx1]

Thanks to this video I found out my cheap external was a fake. The properties read 1.8TB but when I tested it to find out at what point it would delete file it was at a whopping 300MB or so. This scammers will only get worse as the profit from the budget ballers. Thanks for the video

[@PatrickPease]

I was totally disinterested in this video (kind of reverse click bait) and I have no idea why I watched but after you said that you had a previous video I knew there was enough interest and scammy situations to warrant two videos so I watched and I enjoyed it. thanks

[@rashira9610]

The fact that people are still falling for these scams boggles my mind. One might say "Well duh, people that dont know much about computers are the prime target" but no, my mother's boyfriend who knows MORE about computers and electronic price trends than I do fell for this nonsense. Meanwhile I knew something was fishy from the start and I wasnt even in the free world, I was in PRISON. We chatted briefly on the phone when I called my mom one day toward the end of my stint and he told me he got two 1tb flash drives for like $20 each online and I'm like..."Hmm...sounds a bit too good to be true" so he says "Its gotta be real, the computer reads them as 1tb" Come home about six months later and he shows them to me. Generic AF looking flash drives that had "1000gb" poorly screen printed on them. There's two red flags there, generic, unbranded, and saying the supposed capacity in GB instead of just 1tb (to seem more impressive to the uninitiated I suppose). couple HW2TEST runs later and OOF....they were 32gb flash chips...

[@HarithBK]

the odd error are by design. the idea is for you think you got a bad unit and ask for a replacement ship it back and then they stall for a long as possible so they can continue selling there fakes on amazon before mounting reports of fakes and there store front getting shutdown. until then they will get paid by amazon.

[@daskraut]

once upon a time when a GB was still a lot of space i had a really tiny external usb hdd. when it failed i opened it up. it had the most beautiful little platter inside and a little tiny baby arm :) i'm almost glad that it died! also i wonder why the scammers deliver anything at all. why don't they just send a rude note?

[@the_dark_jumper2211]

Probably because no one would look at a note and think "yeah, that looks like what I ordered" The more people you fool into believing they received what they ordered, the longer your post stays up -> more sales, less effort creating new seller accounts.

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, for the majority of customers who buy these, they open it and think 'ooh, shiny!'; they plug it in and see that it reports 2TB capacity (fake, but they can't tell); they copy a file to it and experience a rush of gratification that they got an amazing shiny bargain. By the time they realise they have been scammed, their data is lost and it's probably too late to easily claim a refund.

[@skymessiah1]

I'd imagine that its a delaying tactic. The vendor account probably has a relatively short life (if all they are selling is scam items) and they don't want to get hit with so many back-to-back refunds that Amazon terminates them (which, although they are seemingly quite relaxed I'm sure they do eventually!) before they can cash-out. Storage is an ideal product category really because sometimes although the spoofed capacity is obviously fake there really is some (small) amount of storage capacity there so the user can actually test the device / make light use of it without spotting any problems. I bet in a lot of cases after some time has passed people are much less interested in refunding it / reporting it to Amazon. If I found a £5 usb stick in a drawer that I bought as 1TB a year and half a go and plugged it in and it wasn't working right I wouldn't immediately think "Its a scam!" - I'd probably just think "Oh - it died. That's a shame!".

[@AtomicShrimp]

@@skymessiah1 Yeah - I think it's probably the case that most people buying these fake devices won't even try to fill them to their stated capacity straight away - these scam devices typically have 16 or 32 GB of true storage capacity, and people may not use more than that until months later; worse, people have a tendency toward using the files that they most recently put on the device (which are the most likely to remain intact, but adding them may have destroyed the contents of earlier added files). Some of the people arguing that their cheap 2TB drive was real and genuine, were doing so on the basis that they had added a load of files, and verified each of them in turn immediately after adding each one (without realising that the first files they stored were probably lost)

[@skymessiah1]

@Atomic Shrimp Re. real cheap 2TB drives. If I were a scammer I might throw a handful of real 2TB drives (ideally in the same style that my fakes were imitating) into my fulfillment pile and sell them at a loss - just to muddy the waters as it were. Given that the few folk who received the genuine article really did get an unbelievable deal there is an above average chance that they will leave a 5* review which probably boosts the credibility of the listing and will be immune to whatever measures (such as they are) amazon employ to remove fake reviews. One or two of these lucky people might even leap to my product's defense in youtube comment threads!

[@JMcMillen]

USB storage devices are one of the things I have on a list of stuff not to buy from Ebay or Amazon, because it's too easy to get a fake or counterfeit item. If it's something whose function I need to really depend on, I'll spend the extra money to buy it from a reputable store.

[@hjalfi]

That's really interesting --- it seems weirdly complex. Fake microSD cards are dead common, so I would have expected them to get a fake card and just plug it into a real USB adapter; these cost nothing. Having a fake adapter _and_ a fake card seems to double the amount of work. SD cards work by having some flash memory and a little microcontroller, typically an 8051, which handles the SD card protocol. It's possible that they've replaced the firmware, but the only reason I can imagine for that would be to expose raw flash sectors via a custom protocol, and why bother when there are easier ways to do the scam? SD cards, by the way, frequently have backdoors which allow you to run code directly on the SD card's microcontroller!

[@Drallasta]

Methylated spirits is 95% ethanol ~5% methanol.

[@TommyCrosby]

Always test your flash drive before using it, some scammers literally go bold and sell a real product for a buck or two less than other sellers on Amazon and ship you a fake product. I discovered the world of fake storage by buying a fake Samsung SD card.

[@gayforbrae5693]

clearly the only reason why it wasnt what you bought was because you cooked it you probably just melted the spinning hard drive that was in there

[@darkspin3000]

I never heard of brushing but after you described it, I realized it had happened to my family a while back

[@dualwieldroxas358]

Tbh, this is why i tend to avoid buying any computer parts or electronic devices on Ebay or Amazon.

[@Ali-jq1fd]

The fake USBs never fail to outstound me with their stupidity.

[@pawel8365]

Doesn't this just highlight that we should purchase directly from the company and not via Amazon? Both for ethical and practical reasons? If one must use Amazon, then it's vital you know the exact brand you are after, and not simply typing in "best USB drive" or whatever, otherwise you'll have a wall of this fake crap shovelled in front of you. 🤔

[@AtomicShrimp]

Yeah, although even buying from (say) the SanDisk store in Amazon is now no longer 100% reliable. Apparently Amazon will mix products of the same EAN in their warehouses - so if a scammer stocks plausible-looking counterfeits that have official-looking packaging with the real product's EAN, they may be supplied in place of the manufacturer's own stock, just by nature of the way the Logistics are organised at Amazon. Similarly, this is starting to be a problem in physical retail stores too now. The problem of scam devices is creeping into every domain.

[@claire2088]

@@AtomicShrimp this is kinda terrifying

[@inventiveusername5191]

@@AtomicShrimp That's really spooky in part because I know they fake things other than storage drives. You buy a fake storage drive and the worst thing that happens is that you lose some data, or maybe it could brick your machine in rare cases. As Big Clive is always keen to point out, though, an unsafe battery charger can burn your house down.

[@monhi64]

I mean that sounds great on paper but I think it’d be a huge pain in the ass. Imagining having to juggle between endless stores just to examine a product. Then with buying, they’d all ship separately from different services could be a mess. Amazon is great/convenient in theory they just got too much power and effed everything up. An intermediary site that allows you to buy directly from every brand and makes it more convenient and like shopping on a single site could be huge. Maybe I should invent that lol

[@Sevicify]

@@AtomicShrimp Yeah Amazon have been doing that stock comingling for fulfilled listings based on the product barcode (like UPC or EAN) for years, this is handy for them from a logistics standpoint and fulfilling orders quicker but obviously comes with the inherent risk of counterfeit products polluting the pooled stock. From what I've read comingling is only done if products meet certain requirements first such as being in new condition, matching a single Amazon Standard Indemnification Number, don't require approval to be sold and aren't media products. They also have options for sellers to avoid comingling by using Amazon provided labeling for the product which the seller can print & apply themselves or have Amazon do so at an extra per-unit cost, unfortunately the problem is obviously not all sellers use this option.

[@HomelessPank]

bro can I have that candy bar if you're not gonna eat it

[@raystephens9550]

Small correction. Methylated spirits is ethanol, not methanol, and the nasty smell added isn't poison as such (the alcohol by amount to drink to kill would take someone out first) but nitrogenous purine. Ages ago, methanol was used to make metho undrinkable, but corporations are ethically and legally obliged NOT to booby trap lethally and knowingly.

[@LarixusSnydes]

Yes, got scammed myself when buying a 64MB PS2 memory card once. Of course I opened it up and it did contain a BGA package with the proper chip *markings*. I played around with the idea of replacing it with a proper 64 MB chip, but BGA, especially at that ball pitch is just too fiddly to solder for me, so I gave it up.

[@aaronmarko]

About the case, I was thinking it looked like an iPod case. Considering that Apple has ceased production on those, I think it'd be neat to see if you could build your own.

[@bytespider]

blimey, this still happens? I recall getting my first fake flash MP3 player in the early 2000. thankfully they had only faked a 1Gb as 4GB and as long as you didn't over fill it it would be fine to use.

[@KimiXanax]

British cuisine is so bad that he started frying fake USB storage device.

[@petersage5157]

1:25 All together: "It's a different kind of technology." Nice distro on the laptop you used to test the scam device. I used to use BunsenLabs on an AMD machine until I migrated completely to Raspberry Pi.

[@na3rial]

I’ve always wondered how obviously fake listings had glowing reviews from supposedly real people. I assumed they just made fake accounts, but brushing is a whole other level!!