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Redditor buys fake SSDs on eBay to get scammers banned

By PulseAugur Editorial · [2 sources] ·

A Reddit user, u/Hartkralle, is intentionally purchasing fake SSDs and HDDs from suspicious sellers on eBay to report them and get the sellers banned. These drives often contain a microSD card and weights hot-glued inside to mimic the feel of a legitimate, high-capacity drive, such as a "16TB" SSD that only has a 60GB microSD card. While eBay's consumer protection policy allows the user to get a refund, the practice highlights an ongoing scam where unsuspecting buyers can lose their data and money. AI

IMPACT Highlights ongoing scams in consumer electronics that could impact AI hardware users.

RANK_REASON User-driven action to combat a common scam, rather than a product release or company announcement.

Read on Tom's Hardware →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

Redditor buys fake SSDs on eBay to get scammers banned

How we ranked this

Signal score
0 / 100
Composite score across the factors below. Higher = stronger signal that this story matters right now.
Newsworthiness bucket
Tool
User-driven action to combat a common scam, rather than a product release or company announcement.
Source corroboration
2 independent sources
Multiple independent publishers reporting the same story raises confidence that it's real and newsworthy.
Topics
product, other
Editorial topic classification. Feeds into how the story surfaces on /topic/<slug> hub pages and into the per-entity coverage mix.
AI-industry relevance
Standard
On-topic for AI-industry coverage; kept in the public index.
Story freshness
95 days old
Aged out of breaking-news scoring windows; ranking reflects the durable signal from the full source set.

Full methodology in our editorial standards.

COVERAGE [2]

  1. Tom's Hardware TIER_1 English(EN) · Jowi Morales ·

    Redditor buys suspicious drives on eBay just to report the scamming sellers if they get a fake SSD or HDD — latest '16TB' find has weights and microSD card hot-glued inside the enclosure to make it feel legit

    u/Hartkralle says that eBay refunds them when they report these fake drives, so getting scammers banned from the platform is worth their effort. While fake sellers would likely just create a new account on eBay in an hour or so, they say that it's still another hour before an uns…

  2. Mastodon — fosstodon.org TIER_1 English(EN) · [email protected] ·

    Redditor buys suspicious drives on eBay just to report the scamming sellers if they get a fake SSD or HDD… u/Hartkralle says that eBay refunds them when they re

    Redditor buys suspicious drives on eBay just to report the scamming sellers if they get a fake SSD or HDD… u/Hartkralle says that eBay refunds them when they report these fake drives, so getting scammers banned from the platform is worth their effort. While fake sellers would lik…

    LINKS tomshardware.com/…/redditor-buys-suspicio… tomshardware.com/pc-components

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