I can buy a lot of counterfeit stuff on eBay and Amazon. Blacklisting Alibaba sounds to me is like that U.S gov is trying to block other companies to compete with U.S companies, like eBay and Amazon.
Remember when people didn't trust online shopping? Amazon (and to some extent, eBay/PayPal) was responsible for changing that perception. There are very few websites I would type my card number into.
Just check your balance every few days. If you see anything suspicious, do a chargeback and have the card cancelled.
Because it's a pain in the ass.
You have to spend time with the bank to dispute the charges and get the card replaced.
It's also extremely common to get a new card number when they issue you a new card. So all the companies that have your card saved, won't be able to charge your card anymore.
And you might say "well surely it isn't that many sites" but it's still an effort to change your card details everywhere.
Then there are the "important but infrequent" charges, like a domain name renewal. If your card is cancelled and you forget to change your saved card, you'd better be attentive to the renewal notice or you'll lose your domain name.
I don't get why more banks don't let you generate a unique card number per merchant so if it's compromised it affects at most one place.
A lot of them do. Here are some examples:
https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-N...
https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...
That being said, the production of these inferior cables is an inevitable outcome of the race to the bottom on everything. If you (metaphorical "you", not yourself in particular) believe the price for an official Apple ($20/2 meters) or Google ($25/1.8 meters) USB-C cable is too much and go looking for something cheaper, you've already started down a dangerous road. You've said your safety isn't worth $20 and are outsourcing your life to the lowest bidder. Then you find a 6 meter cable for $5 and say "I knew it! Apple/Google were ripping me off!". If you're lucky, it breaks and you grumble and buy another one. If you're unlucky, it lights your house on fire while your family is sleeping. Quality comes at a price, and shysters count on people not being willing to pay that price.
But yes I completely agree. Amazon should not be selling known counterfeit cables (or any other merchandise). There's no excuse for that, you should be able to inherently trust anything Amazon sells you to be genuine (even if it's genuine crap).
I'm not sure how to convince you otherwise.
How about this suggestion, instead of a million, lets try 3 or 4.
You don't need to convince me, I know what you mean. But I don't want to have to buy Hachette books from Hachette.com, Penguin books from Penguin.com, MiracleGro from MiracleGro.com, Cards Against Humanity from CardsAgainstHumanity.com, bleach from Clorox.com, toilet paper from Charmin.com, etc. It's really nice that for all of those things, I only need to give one company my credit card number. Worst case scenario, two or three.
It's also the same reason I do my grocery shopping at a supermarket and not buying directly from a farmer. I only need to visit one store (maybe two).
The problem is that if you don't know to pay attention to the seller, you can end up buying from a third party while looking at a first party product page.
That is a misleading statement because Amazon only commingles third party sellers, not their own inventory. If you buy from "Amazon itself" you aren't at risk of getting commingled inventory.
"The system has enabled Amazon to make better use of its warehouse space and keep a wide variety of items in stock around the country. The idea is to give Amazon flexibility to ship certain products based on their proximity to customers, speeding delivery times. For third-party sellers, it saves them the trouble of having to label individual items sent to the Amazon warehouse. The bar code takes care of that. But the practice has in some cases led to mix-ups between counterfeit and authentic products, even when they are sent by Amazon itself."
That would appear to be why Wusthof knives, for instance, forbids any authorized retailer from commingling and doesn't count Amazon as an authorized retailer.
Another category I know of are Arduinos. It has often been noted that, since Amazon warehouses commingle stock of "identical" products from different vendors, the reputation of the marketplace vendor won't even protect you, since the vendors have no control whether you got a genuine item or a counterfeit off the pile (Not sure whether that is an ongoing practice, but it was widely reported a few years ago).
Still, different serial chips mean different device drivers, so one product shouldn't be sold under the other's name.
So much for the US trying to block other companies.