Censored Amazon Review of Sandisk Ultra 32GB Micro SDHC Card | Hacker News Reader

Censored Amazon Review of Sandisk Ultra 32GB Micro SDHC Card

joeyh.name

51 pointsedward9 comments

Funny fact - Sandisk products sold on Chinese market have additional 18-digit code protected by scratchpad, and you can verify authenticity of the card on http://verify.sandisk.cn. You don't need to unpack the card to scratch the pad and get the code for verification.

How does that work? The code is valid only once or counterfeiters can just copy it on the new packaging?

Or is it based on "Trust in the scratchpad technology" ?

I'm not sure how the SanDisk one works, but other verification checkers in China have 'this code has been viewed X times' on the result page.

So if the counterfeit product has copied a real code, you might see 'this code has been viewed 33000 times' instead of 0.

Sandisk one works this way exactly. When you check the same code second time, you get the message '您输入的防伪码正确，但是已被查询过，您可以拨打400-670-6711进行人工查询,我们可以提供首次查询时间以及查询方式' (translation - 'The security code you entered is correct, but it has been queried. You can call Sandisk customer care for manual query. We can provide the first query time and query method.') with 'attention!' sign.

Amazon doesn't care about counterfeit merchandise, for MicroSDs I only buy them used anymore, usually off eBay (which also doesn't care about fake MicroSD cards :c). They get the benefit of survivorship bias, are cheaper and I have yet to get a fake MicroSD this way.

Sounds like a good way to get rid of all the conterfeit ones I got stuck with.

Sounds like a good way to get some decents reviews for your seller account.

If you don't trust the source this is a good way to check:

    openssl enc -aes-128-cbc -k lasldj -nosalt </dev/zero >/dev/sdX
    openssl enc -aes-128-cbc -k lasldj -nosalt | cmp - /dev/sdX

Edit: now that I think about it, Joey's thinking this is something "Amazon clearly wants to cover up" might be misdirected. I'm sure Amazon values their customer as much as any other company in a highly competitive marketplace. They sure don't want you giving up on them for the corner computer store. A better explanation is "there is nothing more stupid as a bureaucracy", and in this case providing a sellers complaints system inappropriate reviews sounds like the perfect lair for a bureaucracy whose KPI is "seller complains resolved".

My gut read on that is that the "Google Amazon counterfiet[sic]" is what triggered the rejection. Sending people to Google feels like an end-run around the "no linking' rule.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com