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Comment by wyxuan | Hacker News Reader

It's called brushing and basically a Chinese seller sends something cheap (like seeds, or trinkets) and then creates a review from "someone in the US".

The shipping portion is necessary because they need the tracking info for the sale to be counted.

edit:oops, accidentally mixed up churning with brushing. churning is something else

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> It's called churning

There was an almost identical scam which has been going on for a while called "Brushing"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushing_(e-commerce)

Some of it is to get the "verified purchase" reviews, but the specific discussion was around the Alibaba IPO and whether it can be used to inflate stock price via fake revenues.

I somehow got put on a Brushing list for a while, I was sent a camping stove, some XXL size pajamas, a bartender kit, and a Chinese wedding jacket.

I only was able to track down the glowing review for the bartender kit, I have no idea where the other stuff was purchased from.

Well... how were they?

Apparently bartender kit was top stuff

But seeds cast a whole other dimension onto this problem... It is not a problem if they send you a cheap plastic bracelet but seeds can have unforseen consequences

Seeds are a common e-commerce scam, coz by the time you knew what it turned out to be, it's too late to do anything.

Indeed, the seed page on Aliexpress is one the most peculiar thing I've seen in a while, blue strawberries, giant tomatoes (advertised to be as big as a watermelon) and all sorts of other weird fruits.

I spent 5$ on these a while back with some friends, about 50% never arrived and the other 50% didn't sprout. Could be my bad though.

If you actually want weird seeds, try Baker Creek.

I can vouch for Baker Creek. We have grown some incredible heirloom plants.

Ditto. Purple beans ftw!

Yes, Baker creek is awesome! Also their seed catalog is the prettiest/most enjoyable one I've ever seen.

Just reminded me of someone I knew back in 2015 that ordered some of these strange off color blue strawberries and fruits, most of his Chinese seeds did not germinate, but the few that did were a strange little regular plant that were not thoroughly bred well. I would never try to order seeds outside of your local famous standard seed houses.

Is it just me, or does it seem like resistance is futile? If Virgina's ecology depends on people reading that obscure notice, it's already over.

Though optimistically, perhaps the worst and most destructive invasive threats have already arrived?

Australia do well with biosecurity, but it requires a lot of vigilance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_Australia

As someone who is a biologist in Australia, oh my god is it a headache to get seeds into Australia. Lots of paperwork involved if we actually want to grow overseas plants, much easier to import extracted RNA or DNA (but way riskier for the research, shipping companies aren't trustworthy in keeping smaller shipments on ice). The dogs and the x-ray at the airport are not for drugs, they're mostly biosecurity, too. I can't see something like the OP happening in Australia, it would get destroyed at the border

Fellow Australian here, and I've always viewed our biosecurity as being pretty tight and effective, too.

Apparently however small innocuous packets/letters don't receive quite as much screening, as I've heard of people getting marijuana seeds in the mail just fine.

And private planes don't seem to be inspected. If Depp can get his dogs through undetected seeds shouldn't be a problem.

Considering how one or two seeds can be enough if the purpose is simply to acquire the species it seems like an impossible task to prevent that.

It's far more difficult than drug smuggling which only works in some reasonable quantity - and becomes more like information smuggling in biological form where you only need one copy.

Even non-reproducing material generates amusing customs stories: http://www.hughesscgheritage.com/probe-is-an-export-diamond-...

"The precedent-setting agreement classifies a spacecraft as an export. Once launched, satellite components were judged to be “severed from the possibility of trade within the United States” and therefore considered to be exports, according to Customs officials."

Yep, and just see how brilliantly that worked to keep the cain toad[1](among other species, which turned out to be quite a pest) out of the country.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toad

It is because of our early history - heavy with hubris - with introduction and escape/release of cane toads, prickly pair, tiger pear, rabbits, foxes, camels, fruit fly, etc ... that Australia is now extremely cautious.

That was in the 1930s.. quite a stretch to project that failure to modern times.

The cane toad was introduced intentionally (it just turned out to be a bad idea). It was also the 1930s.

Meanwhile New Zealand looks at Australia, pulls out their own biosecurity system and says "That's not a biosecurity system. That's a biosecurity system.

NZ is the only country I know that makes you take your shoes off in the airport... in order to scrub and bleach them (to be fair they were hiking boots, though not obviously filthy). What service!

True, but NZ has also learned it the hard way. There was once a vibrant birdlife in the South Island, especially. There is some early settler who said that the morning birdsong in Queenstown was deafening. Cats, introduced by European settlers, killed off a lot of the native birds, and the ecosystem is only recently hobbling back to normal (have done birdwatching in NZ).

If you are interested in bird conservation in NZ, please visit Karori park in Wellington and contribute.

BTW: some parks in US also have installed brushes to wipe your boots for preventing the transmission of invasive species seeds. I think there are a few in Wisconsin that I remember.

Some preserves in California have trays of disinfectant to step through, specifically for Sudden Oak Death. It’s a pathogen transmitted through dirt, so in the very few places that aren’t affected yet it’s hard to keep out.

Yup like wooden crates packaging actual products but infested with emerald ash bohrer or asian long horned beetle larvae. Only NZ and AU have an effective biisecurity policies.

I have shipped some of my belongings from Scandinavia to California and back, in plywood crates. Shipping company said that if the crates were untreated, customs in both ends would bake them at rather high temp to kill insects (content still inside). Unsure if that is true or just a myth to make people comply

I'm not the least bit surprised after what happened with A. glabripennis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_long-horned_beetle

Not really. Apparently folks can order these seeds already? So its happening, notice or no notice. It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in gardens of every conceivable corner of the earth.

Starting in the 1700's with botanists traveling the world to collect and disseminate them. Which gave us modern corn, wheat, flowering plants, grasses, succulents and nearly everything we grow, harvest and appreciate today. May be a little late to start being concerned about this.

It seems inevitable that seeds of every plant will be in gardens of every conceivable corner of the earth.

Not inevitable at all. Try arriving in Australia with a piece of fruit in your hand luggage, or try arriving in New Zealand with mud on your walking boots, and see what happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosecurity_in_New_Zealand

Not for rich people flying on thier own planes. They don't seem to get inspected.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-36052243

I actually arrived in New Zealand with mud under my walking boots once - we had been trecking on Rarotonga, Cook Islands the day before, and I had not read the customs rules for NZ before filling in the paper slip, shortly before getting off the plane (if I remember correctly, it was approximately 10 years ago) - I had to wash the soles in a shallow tub with some sort of squishy pillow in it.

Try ordering seeds thru Amazon? Who's looking at that?

I ordered some seeds off Amazon from what I thought was a local seller for a regional plant.

The seeds arrived months later, well after planting season, from Kazakhstan. The customs declaration called them plastic beads, but they were definitely seeds. I destroyed them, because I couldn't know for sure they really were what they said they were - seems unlikely a niche regional American plant would be available in Kazakhstan.

Would Australia really be able to stop these cases where they lie on the customs form?

It sounds like you have less than a passing familiarity with the issue. We have a better understanding of the dangers of invasives and a better regulatory framework to control them than we did in the 1700s. We have eradication programs trying to limit or stop the spread of some of the worst species. Most of them are not beneficial crops.

Maybe a little too soon to just give up completely?

After 2 centuries of indiscriminate replanting? I seem to have a better grasp than most on this topic.

Its a waste of resources in case of cheap plastic bracelet. In both cases, it all adds up the pile of pointless S&H.

Yes, they are also waste of resources and a review spamming problem. I should have phrased that better.

Would not surprise me if this is a state-controlled campaign to cause harm.

Not just that but there's also a method where the product name and photo is edited later. So they ship one dollar items and later edit it to be something much more valuable on amazon.

There are so many items that have reviews for obviously different items right now. I’ve seen it on a lot of COVID related items like no contact thermometers.

Should be easy to catch these.

People take a good listing and rename everything for some fake piece of shit product.

It's incredibly despicable people are finding a way to risk people's lives over covid for a dollar in profit

That's a longstanding Amazon bug. As I understand it, a seller can "hijack" the reviews of another product that's no longer available by registering their product as a variant of the existing one.

One person's bug is another person's feature.

Jeffs feature

Is there any way to report these?

I found one obvious one the other day, but after about 15 minutes of searching couldn't work out how to report it without a seller account..

I had a similar experience trying to report a product that extremely misrepresented itself and yet had ~5 stars from reviews that were obviously assigned from an unrelated product.

My impression is that Amazon doesn't want to know: good reviews, fake or not, drive more transactions in the short term.

That seems very short sighed of Amazon. The viability of Amazon's open marketplace depends on the review system. Once all trust in reviews is gone people will increasingly shop somewhere else (whether that's a shop with more reliable reviews or one that carefully selects what they sell)

The other issue I'm seeing with thermometers is that they are saying "FDA Certified." The FDA doesn't certify anything. They provide Pre-Market Approval in a letter.

A lot of these thermometers also aren't approved. They haven't done a 510k submittal to market these products in the US. Please check that any thermometer you buy on Amazon has a 510k approval letter logged by the FDA, or it may not provide accurate temperature information.

This is the part that doesn't make sense: these items don't have Delivery Confirmation. They're untracked. I even entered in a few from the Facebook link below where people posted their own screenshots, and yep, UJ.........CN tracking numbers aren't tracked once they reach USA.

So what's the point of sending out anything at all?

Just include any old tracking number for any other legit purchase as proof of sending something on an illegit purchase.

Dunno how China works but in the UK you can obtain proof you posted an untracked item, it would verify the address you sent it to

Ya can’t tell me Bezos doesn’t know this.

How isn’t this enabling fraud?

Shouldn’t be able to completely change the listing. Versión bumps might be ok maybe?

I believe completely changing the listing can sometimes trigger a review. But most of the times, they change it slowly in separate revisions so it is impossible to detect.

It shouldn’t be impossible. Diff the latest revision with the first. If it’s simply a revision of an existing product, things don’t change that much. If it’s substantially different, it’s simply a new product. Even small revisions of products usually get entirely new product names and numbers. It’s weird to let one product hang around for 10 years and go through several changes.

Hell, don’t let the product name change. Have a base name and an extension that can be appended and edited, with a text requirement for each (eg 12 characters minimum for the product name and 30 characters max for revision extension.) Do something similar with the description content and have a space for product changes/enhancements following an uneditable and mandatory product description.

You’re trying to solve a social problem with a technological solution. The social problem is that Amazon doesn’t want to fix this. What Amazon wants is more sales, and as long as this kind of thing does not impact what they want, it would be a waste of money to do something which would not benefit them. Meanwhile, Amazon is a huge market for lemons¹ which drives out all sellers except the cheap junk ones, while simultaneously being so absolutely huge that nobody can realistically stop selling on Amazon or stop buying from Amazon.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

It’s not that hard to do text similarity tests, but they also don’t need to: simply having a survey or report button would make this scam harder to pull off. You could even toss in a bounty like they do for choosing slower shipping.

Amazon doesn’t because they don’t care. It must not be costing them much money because we know they’re watching the numbers closely.

I've bumped into this when I went back to buy more.

This was a "Ultralight Backpacking Canister Camp Stove with Piezo Ignition 3.9oz!" for about $8. Now it is some sort of headphone jack. Several things like that, where the product that was previously ordered... changed. Most of the comments for this one are still about the stove.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004U8CP88

That’s egregious. Why is so hard to find any kind of report button on the page (on mobile)? I’d like to at least tick some box saying something is amiss but I can’t find anything.

Amazon does not care, and various reports have shown them actively suggesting it at times.

All Amazon cares about is sales. Nothing else.

They didn’t even change the description, lol

A headphone adapter that has "PIEZO ignition" and "Adjustable flame"... I've come across things like that but assumed they were weird database glitches. Didn't think they were deliberate.

I wonder if that's also what happened to this one, although it's only the picture that's out of place (but also amusingly relevant): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FLGZD46

Are 400GB micro SD cards actually a thing? Am I out of touch.

Someone should weaponise the ability to change the product description to embarrass Amazon in to fixing the problem.

If you make noise they will cut you off and disregard you as a bad actor on their marketplace

Yes you'd want to get a journalist to pick up the story for it to have some impact.

You’d want to do as a collaboration with a journalist, make sure they’re documenting all the details and guiding the narrative.

Yep, they now exist in capacities of up to 1 TB. Also, SanDisk were the first (and probably only) company to sell 200/400 GB microSD cards, supposedly so that they could lay claim to having the highest capacity micro SD card.

https://www.techradar.com/sg/news/this-1tb-microsd-card-high...

>Does not include gas base

But...how do I get the gas base for my headphone jack adapter then? Well, at least it has an adjustable flame.

Is this why I get magazines in the mail that I don't subscribe to? For the past six or seven years we get magazines like Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and a couple others off and on. I haven't bought or subscribed to a paper magazine in 20 years, yet these keep showing up in the mail.

I thought maybe it was the publication trying to adjust their demographics to increase rates (we live in a zip code with lots of college graduates and high incomes).

I know I used to receive several free magazines because having a large audience for advertisers is apparently more profitable than actually selling the magazine. But I don’t remember ever receiving a magazine I didn’t ask for.

The same thing happened to me, I started getting Cosmopolitan and InStyle unsolicited. It happened shortly after my college-aged daughter bought a small Coach bag (using a credit card on my account), so I assumed they determined our household was the right demographic for their advertisers.

What they did with me was to send me the magazine three times, then they sent me a letter thanking me for my subscription, and an invoice.

> Chinese seller sends something cheap

I don't understand. Why do they need to ship anything in the box at all? They could ship empty boxes and still have tracking numbers show as delivered.

maybe weight requirements?

Maybe also customs would get suspicious if they start detecting empty boxes?

Customs might get even more suspicious about seeds, since (1) there are all sorts of regulations about agricultural imports and (2) the seeds could be for an illegal substance, such as marijuana.

A few seeds don't weigh much. And then why not add some old newspaper in there?

These packages are untracked and don't have delivery confirmation. I checked a few. So I don't know what's going on.

In China they usually need to pay 1 to 1.5 dollars for someone willingly doing it for them, it's open secret and an entire industry, it feeds platform's ranking/recommendation system to get ahead, sometimes platforms actively encourage it.

You may have heard of the Singles Day shopping event, it's common for sellers to boost their revenue that day to meet requirements from platforms, like selling a cheap T-shirt for $150 then refund it upon receiving the package.

It's like the physical delivery version of the photos I've seen of a single human operating 40 budget $100 Android phones, all on different VPNs and Google play accounts, to do review stuffing. It is its whole own industry. Kind of like how online game gold farming is an industry.

They really made a mistake choosing something suspicious like seeds. They should have chosen something more innocuous such as a bracelet or a pencil.

This has never made sense to me. Just mail an empty envelope if that is your goal.

Might it be the case that another party is handling fulfillment and this isn’t an option for the manufacturer who wants to create fake reviews?

I like the "Ship of Theseus" name myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21547112

A friend had his information (leaked from some company who he used to buy products from its database) used for this. I wonder if they usually get their information from stolen user DBs

Would reporting the tracking number on the package to Amazon help catch them?

The thing is, platforms don't really care, it adds to their GMV and fees, in turn it boosts their valuation.

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