6 Counterfeit Products That Can Ruin a Lot More Than Just Your Day

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/6-counterfeit-products-can-ruin-lot-more-just-your-day



1. Booze. Bogus liquor isn't some new trend; unscrupulous distillers have fooled and even poisoned revelers since at least the time of Alexander the Great. But the new popularity of high-end liquors has been followed by many toxic fake spirits trying to cash in on the trend. Unfortunately, many of these sham liquors can sicken, blind, even kill those who drink them.

***snip

2. Olive Oil. That healthy olive oil you bought at the market might not be so healthy after all. In recent years, studies have indicated that as much as 70% of olive oil marked “extra virgin” does not meet the standards for the label. In fact, there have been several cases where olive oil refineries have been caught adulterating or entirely counterfeiting the oil.

***SNIP

3. Medicine. Counterfeit drugs can easily wind up in your medicine cabinet. Not only are these fake medications unlikely to be effective, they're often much worse than a placebo. Counterfeit drugs may contain some worrisome ingredients such as gypsum, brick powder, commercial paint, boric acid, and floor wax. If the fake medication has the real medication's active ingredient, it's usually cut considerably.

***SNIP

4. Digital Media. Nothing is as easily pirated as a product that exists in the ether. Movies, music, video games, and software are very easy to rip off and repackage. While we've all seen fake DVDs for sale from street vendors, beware of buying boxed software from anyone that's not an authorized retailer. Counterfeit boxed versions of Microsoft Windows and Office have circulated that can hijack computers, disable firewalls, erase data, and steal users' personal information.

[Lancero]

1. Scariest thing about the medicine...

Is that it's not just the OTC's - your asprins and cough syrups - that are getting counterfeited. The behind counter stuff, things that require a doctor to prescribe it, get faked as well.

As scary as it is, it's not really that surprising. We're outsourcing more and more of out medicine production to other countries so Pharma can make bigger bucks.

As for fake electronics, China strikes again. I was looking for dirt cheap memory cards for a couple of projects, and I found a place that will make your fakes to order. Want the memory card to read as 32 GB? Sure, they can do that. 64? Yep. Want them to print over the memory card to make it look nice and official? Ditto. They'll make em read as whatever you want, print whatever you want, and ship em prepackaged for a few dollars a card.

[fizzgig]

2. counterfeit meds

because my happy ass needs something else to worry about.

[pacalo]

3. Back when it was hard to find "Wings" on dvd, I bought online what turned out to be

a pirated version of the entire "Wings" series for $100. The "Nick @ Night" logo is in the bottom right-hand corner on every scene, but, worse, the cute endings were muted by "Nick @ Night" promotional who-gives-a-hoot nonsense. At least the commercials were snipped out.

K&R for an interesting article.

[Lancero]

4. I ended up getting counterfeits of CSI Miami, all seasons, off ebay.

Didn't figure it out until a week after I got em since they were high quality fakes.

It was complete with almost perfect cases and almost perfect dvd artwork.

The episodes were high quality as well. A couple had some syncing issues, but the rest were perfect.

...The outer cases haven't aged well though. Cheap glue dried out, and now they are starting to fall apart.

[progressoid]

5. One-Third of the SanDisk Memory Cards are Counterfeit

at any given time, approximately a third of the SanDisk memory cards (made by Toshiba) being used out there in the world are counterfeit. As in, not SanDisk memory cards at all—some other kind of cards dressed up as lookalikes.

Thirty percent, was the number quoted. A third, more or less.

http://petapixel.com/2011/05/20/one-third-of-the-sandisk-memory-cards-on-earth-are-counterfeit/