Walmart.com Listed Fake 30 TB SSDs For Sale
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Vice shares the story of security researcher “Ray [REDACTED],” who couldn’t resist buying a 30 TB SSD on AliExpress for the insanely low price of $29.99, later finding the same product on sale at Walmart.com for $17.99. What he found inside were two 512 MB SD cards. However, when he plugged the SSD into a Windows machine, it reported that each SD card held 15 TB thanks to hacked firmware that wrote new data over old data while keeping the fake directory structure intact.
Have you ever heard the expression “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”? Well AliExpress is currently advertising a 30 Terabyte SSD for $29. And I just had one delivered. Let’s open it up, shall we? /1 pic.twitter.com/cVXtr42LW5
— Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) August 25, 2022
Walmart has since taken down the listing, but there are surely countless more scams on its website and many others. Unfortunately, by allowing nearly any vendor to list items on their sites, major online retailers like Amazon and Walmart have turned their storefronts into virtual flea markets full of sketchy third-party sellers. Be careful what you buy, even on “respectable” sites!
By the way, 30 TB SSDs do exist but will set you back more like $6200; these scam SSDs are the modern version of getting a Polaris Nuclear Sub from the back of a comic book for $6.98.
I saw one of these scams on Amazon. I wrote a review that said: “This is obviously a fraud. How can Amazon allow this to be posted?”. Amazon rejected my review, which answers my question.
David
Amazon at least at times is really bad about this.
I once got a product that was OK-ish, but along with the product I got an “Amazon gift card voucher” that said if I left a 5-star review and gave them my email address (and didn’t tell Amazon or anybody else about it), they’d send me an Amazon gift card for $15. This was for a device worth $10. I promptly informed Amazon about that (good luck talking to an actual human there), but nothing ever happened despite their assurance they’d take care of it. The product remained for sale and sure enough, tons of 5-star reviews started pouring in right around that time (talk about a bunch of losers who would whore out reviews for $15). So I then left a certified review for that product stating what was good about it and bad, but also that reviews were likely tainted because of the scam attempt. I even left a photo to document the “Amazon gift card voucher” included with my shipment.
What did Amazon do after all this? They removed my review. The product was still selling months later.
These fakes are all over ebay as well (eg 4/8/16TB USB 3.1 External SSD Hard Drive Disk High Speed Solid State Portable | eBay - 8TB SSD for AU$43 - sure).