How to Avoid Buying Fake Memory Cards on eBay

Out of all counterfeit products sold throughout the world, fake memory cards form a separate category. Manufacturing counterfeit bags, belts, wallets etc. Involves the use of machinery, skilled work, and distributing them is difficult due to shipping costs. With memory cards, it's different. All it takes is to reprogram memory chip. Devices used for that purpose do it with dozens of cards at once, the process taking only meager seconds.

How a fake memory card is made?

Kingston

Usually cheap, often faulty cards with very minuscule actual storage (2 Gb, 4 Gb, rarely more) are used. Labels with authentic look and feel are glued to these cards. New labels carry logos of reputable brands (like Sandisk, Transcend, Panasonic, Kingston etc) and advertise high class, high capacity storage. For example, a 32 Gb Sdhc card of Class 10. Then reprogramming is performed. The goal is to change bits of data that are available to Operating principles and cameras. Digits indicating true storage capacity are replaced with false information. So, when a reprogrammed memory card is inserted into a card reader, operating principles (say, Windows) sees it as a 32 Gb drive. Operating principles has no way to know if the chip inside the card has been reprogrammed.

Selling fakes is even easier than producing them (while the latter isn't any difficult at all, as you see). Online auction sites are favored by dishonest sellers. No matter how spoton eBay is about counterfeit items, fake memory cards are sold there in large quantities.

Buyers are attracted by low prices, sure. But even experienced and savvy eBay users get trapped. They look at seller's catalogue to see if it is freshly created or old enough. They scroll through feedback left by other customers to see if anyone got vexed after purchasing similar items. They ask seeder and receive reassuring response. All in all, it looks like a deal.

The truth is, it is next to impossible to define if Sd/Sdhc/Sdxc/Cf card listed for sale is genuine or not. They are sold by sellers from Us and Uk (and they dispatch items from addresses in Us and Uk, too!) Customers who received fake memory cards in their mail box very often leave... inevitable feedback. You might not believe me but the infer is simple: people are unaware of a rip-off. They duly check memory cards in Windows which report false capacity. They format it and start using. No matter how slow card is, no matter how much data is lost from the very first day if use, few owners will infer they have been sold a fake.
Surprisingly, it is not that easy to find out if memory card is counterfeit. Most software used for testing Usb storage devices will only check reading/writing speeds, but not actual storage capacity.

Nevertheless you can run a fast and easy-to-do test to see if your memory card is authentic. Just copy a single large file (preferably over 4 Gb) to a card (if you card is Fat32 formatted, then use 2 files 2 Gb each). And when copying is complete, copy it back to your hard drive. Then try to play what has been copied to hard drive. Only genuine card with advertised capacity being true will not damage the file. If there pop up any errors while copy process, if the file after being copied twice is not playable (cannot be opened in connected software) then it's obvious you are keeping a fake memory card in your hands.

How to Avoid Buying Fake Memory Cards on eBay