Walmart Lists a 30TB Portable SSD for Just $39. It's a Scam (arstechnica.com) 122
What's the deal with that supposed 30TB external SSD being sold for just $31.40 on China-based online shopping site AliExpress? It's also listed on Walmart's website for just $39 — but first, listen to cybersecurity researcher calling himself "Ray [REDACTED]".
Scammer gets two 512MB Flash drives. Or 1 gigabyte, or whatever. They then add hacked firmware that makes it misreport its size... when you go to WRITE a big file, hacked firmware simply writes all new data on top of old data, while keeping directory (with false info) intact.
Ars Technica goes over the details: On the inside, this "SSD" looks like two small-capacity microSD cards hot glued to a USB 2.0-capable board. This board's firmware has been modified so that each of these cards reports its capacity as "15.0TB" to the operating system, for a total of 30TB, even though the actual capacity of the cards is much lower.... It preserves the directory structure of whatever you're copying, but when it's "copying" your data, it just keeps writing and rewriting over the tiny microSD cards.
Everything will look fine until you go to access a file, only to find that the data isn't there.
Replies to Ray Redacted's thread are full of alternate versions of this scam, including multiple iterations of the hot-glued microSD version and at least one that hid a USB thumb drive inside a larger enclosure. Fake USB storage devices are neither new nor rare, though this one makes spectacularly egregious claims about its price-per-gigabyte. When it comes to buying storage online, common-sense advice is best: stick to name brands, buy from trustworthy sellers.... and know that if a deal seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Ars Technica goes over the details: On the inside, this "SSD" looks like two small-capacity microSD cards hot glued to a USB 2.0-capable board. This board's firmware has been modified so that each of these cards reports its capacity as "15.0TB" to the operating system, for a total of 30TB, even though the actual capacity of the cards is much lower.... It preserves the directory structure of whatever you're copying, but when it's "copying" your data, it just keeps writing and rewriting over the tiny microSD cards.
Everything will look fine until you go to access a file, only to find that the data isn't there.
Replies to Ray Redacted's thread are full of alternate versions of this scam, including multiple iterations of the hot-glued microSD version and at least one that hid a USB thumb drive inside a larger enclosure. Fake USB storage devices are neither new nor rare, though this one makes spectacularly egregious claims about its price-per-gigabyte. When it comes to buying storage online, common-sense advice is best: stick to name brands, buy from trustworthy sellers.... and know that if a deal seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Out of stock (Score:1)
Hmm....
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It's a non-story anyway, only Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) users are affected. From the reviews at walmart.com:
"Verified Purchaser
7/13/2022
Originally had thought the drive was a 16 TB instead of a 30 TB but realized that the windows operating system could not access more than 16 TB.
Alan"
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Confirmed, no problems for Mac users. Probably since it's Unix underneath, they tend to be very technically competent :
Walmart.com 7/8/2022:
"Excellent external drive
The listed capacity is accurate. It is easy to use with a MacBook Pro. It come with two standard cables - usb-c to usb-c and usb-c to sub-A. Only a usb-c port is on the hard drive which makes data transfer very fast.The hard drive itself doesn't have a battery so it only functions when physically connected to your laptop. Future versions of thi
If it sounds too good to be true (Score:1)
Re:I guess we'll never know (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, this scam has been around since 4GB USB drives, and probably long before that. Another common one is that it comes preloaded with viruses, so the first thing you do if you buy any flash media of any kind from China is mount it on a non-Windows system and burn it to the ground before reformatting and starting afresh. The particularly nasty ones appear as two drives, one writeable, one a bootable CDROM, for that all you can do is use it as a target for kinetic-energy based erasure.
Re: I guess we'll never know (Score:2)
You mean to tell me . . . (Score:2)
someone from China was peddling a fake product to scam people? I'm shocked, shocked to find that scamming is going on around here!
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My concern is that legitimate sellers feel they have to misrepresent. I recently was looking for a new SSD drive. I went to the most reputable seller I knew. I was very disappointed as this seller represented combination of SSD and hard drives as SSD drives. It really took me a while to understand the misdirec
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That would be rather deceiving. Otherwise it's often the consumers that don't really seem to know what's going on. I've often got to explain that "M.2" is not a definitive qualifier for fast SSDs. Like a SATA SSDs is upgraded to a PCIe NVMe if you plug it into an M.2 slot.
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This is why one uses a VAR or a fairly reputable reseller. For example, OfficeMax isn't cheap, but in my experience has a clean supply, where if I buy a SSD from them, I'll get exactly what I ordered. Same if I buy from B&H, Adorama, or a similar professional outfitter. Even Newegg has been good at ensuring what was specced is what was physically sent and worked.
With VARs, their rep is on the line and if they sell a customer an enterprise SSD that consists of a microSD chip with bongoed firmware, th
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Newegg? You're kidding right?
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Then you got lucky. They have a reputation for selling returned defective motherboards, untested, as "open box." And then denying the return when they follow the normal procedure when you try to return it.
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Newegg's been caught red handed outright defrauding people so much that GamersNexus collected a mountain of documentation from the victims and then literally flew out to their front door with a camera to demand an explanation for their bullshit.
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The hacked firmware itself isn't a fake product. They're used to make essentially devices for logging for crappy hardware: the drive pretends to have infinite space but instead has a circular buffer. The thing it's used in just live forever without having to do anything smart.
Selling it as real is a scam of course.
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Rrd?
Not sure what you mean.
Three was definitely a thing where the drives understood FAT 32 so they were used as a retrofit. The device using then needed no updates. Kind of a funny solution but there you go.
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Re: You mean to tell me . . . (Score:2)
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It's only fair for Walmart to be held accountable anyway, it's their platform. It's their job to keep the crap off it, and that means the crap sellers. Nobody takes this job seriously ofc, it would be unprofitable, but that's still where the blame should lie.
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It's only fair for Walmart to be held accountable anyway, it's their platform. It's their job to keep the crap off it, and that means the crap sellers. Nobody takes this job seriously ofc, it would be unprofitable, but that's still where the blame should lie.
Oh I actually agree with you that it's their responsibility. But the scale at which an Amazon or a Walmart would need to fully, 100%, proactively screen every company and every product running through their marketplace... well, I understand why they're willing to take occasionally media slams and work reactively too.
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It does serve as an illustration to how marketplace sellers like Wal-Mart and Amazon are making a cut of these sales and doing nothing to police it. They are far enough removed that they can just collect the profit and continue to ignore the fake product even after it hits the news.
This is scary because (Score:2)
b) I don't post on this site anymore, and haven't in years.....
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Newegg
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And Newegg is Chinese-owned (Liaison Interactive) for those that weren't aware.
what was never old is not new again (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not Walmart per se; Walmart online has listed third-party sellers for years(?) [walmart.ca]
"You'll know if a product is sold by a third party seller by finding the âoeSold & shipped byâ section on any product page or in your cart or at checkout. In this section, you will see the third party seller's name displayed."
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The walmart.com version doesn't have this marketplace.
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walmart.ca is CANADIAN walmart. They have what is called "Walmart Marketplace" which is a lot like Amazon or AliExpress where third-part vendors sell through walmart's web site.
The walmart.com version doesn't have this marketplace.
They clearly still have third party vendors, though. If you look at the US version you will see the same kind of horseshit that gets stuffed into Amazon, with half of the ad copy in the product name that gets used for the page head and title. That is not Wal-Mart's marketing team setting those names. I have no knowledge of how the fulfillment works, though.
Old scam (Score:2)
Scam would be more effective at a higher price (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Scam would be more effective at a higher price (Score:4, Interesting)
At $30, many people won't take the time trying to file a dispute and shipping the thing back, especially when shipping costs more than they already paid. $400 is enough that people will try harder to get it back.
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I remember when "your computer has a virus" banners appeared on web-pages. Several times, I had to remove a virus the user had paid $150-200 to install. I advised them to reverse the credit-card charge but few of them did. They didn't want to admit they were ignorant and easily tricked into damaging their own equipment.
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At $30, many people won't take the time trying to file a dispute and shipping the thing back
Which begs a question of liability. We all expect and can't do f-all about Aliexpress postings. But maybe, just maybe a local company hosting products on its market place should be held accountable for the obvious scam listings on their platform.
I think it's time Walmart and Amazon spend a few more days in court for selling scams in the USA.
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If a product is fake then you don't have to pay to return it at all. If the seller refuses a return, you simply contact your credit card company and dispute the charges, and tell them the product was fake. Then they refund you. I'm three for three so far.
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I agree - in principle and in practice. Its why I NEVER buy anything online using a payment method other than Credit Cart, no debit, not paypal, no Zell etc. If you want my business online you'll have to accept credit cards somehow or we simply are not in the same market place. Its because as you say I want the protection the ability to dispute the charges offers both from direct frauds and from someone gaining unauthorized access to the account.
However I have probably gone down the 'dispute the charges'
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Indeed - you should certainly contact customer service for any of the storefront guys before going the CC route.
I can't say I have ever been the victim of fraud related to an amazon purchase. I have had packages not show up though and things arrived damaged from shipping.
I have NEVER had any push back from customer service with them despite all the horror stories you read online. Amazon has been quick to offer a refund or ship out a replacement every time, both Sold-by-Amazon and Market place stuff.
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You can revert debit card charges too, it is just as easy. The cards are just cheaper both for you and the merchants. You don't need to feed the greedy credit card scam.
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banks may or may not let you do that. With CC the law is on your side, its not the same. Also work toward decent credit and then get a rewards card. You are just paying for other people rewards if you don't.
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From the law point of view it is the same it is still the bank letting you revert it. And credit cards hide their fees by forbidding merchants from charging them. So the customer rarely noticed it is sifyning off 3-5% of everything they spend to put on the banks pockets, giving you 0.1% back as rewards.
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Oh. Oh. I've seen similar scams with other hardware, especially network cards and drive controllers. Looking carefully at the card, and seeing that the numbers on the critical chip have been burned off, is a dead giveaway that the "lowest price, best quality" card is fraudulent. I had to ban a vendor who had the lowest hardware prices but kept selling absolute.... "unlabeled component" hardware, swearing they'd "provide fixes" but every lot had a new problem. I also notified other clients, I became concerne
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Says the genius who doesn't know the difference between 'your' and 'you're'.
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"Sorry, Officer, I didn't see the guy I hit with my car, I was driving fast and casually!"
"typing fast" is not an excuse for low quality content. Type slower, if that's the case.
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If we could kill each other with just posting shit on slashdot yoru point would be valid. UNtil then no one really gives much of a shit. You put an unhealthy amounnt of value in things which don't matter. Don't do that. You'll go crazy.
If you wanted "quality content" WTF are you reading Slashdot comment's section? Scroll down and open up some -1 posts for some Nazi ascii art.
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No I really didn't. I just am on a lunchbreak in a boat in the middle of the ocean without enough bandwidth to watch Youtube so I'm commenting on Slashdot out of boredom. People who disagree with your or consider your post stupid aren't automatically triggered. You're not that important. In fact you're completely worthless, and precisely nothing you can ever say on the internet will ever "trigger" me completely random internet person who I have zero affiliation with.
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Yeah, I can definitely see that :)
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Your response is orders of magnitude more level-headed.
Let's not forget that written communication is inherently limited, therefore we should put some effort in to make it clear and articulate.
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And that's fine, I mean... each person has their own drives and motivations.
I personally find it natural to write without mistakes (and they still do happen, accidentally). It was and is a matter of self-respect, netiquette and respect towards others who would read what I wrote.
I was merely pointing out that writing style ultimately comes down to choice, not external factors.
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Your response is orders of magnitude more level-headed.
I'm actually wondering now if you are the one "triggered" due to my use of swear words. Somehow my communication style isn't level headded? What did I say earlier? You'll go crazy? Sounds like you already area.
Or do you disagree that by browsing at -1 you see a shittonne of nazi asciiart? In which case *deep inhale* .... bahahahahahahaha.
Let's not forget that written communication is inherently limited, therefore we should put some effort in to make it clear and articulate.
Put your effort where it matters. Replyign on some internet forum hardly matters. Hey look at the bottom of the screen, notice it doesn't even say "stuff that matters" unde
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...And insecure, too. You had to bring up PhD dissertations and whatnot.
Sad...
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Says the genius who canâ(TM)t comprehend people typing fast and casually
What was the hurry exactly?
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We onlyhave so many hours in a day. And only so much shit to give about. The hurry is to gain more time to focus on things which matter (actual life) rather than things which don't (ensuring we are grammatically correct on a message board which typically includes posts with swastikas and morons peddling conspiracy bullshit).
I think the real question is, why do you have such an elevated opinion of Slashdot?
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Says the genius who canâ(TM)t comprehend people typing fast and casually
What was the hurry exactly?
I do have other things to do in the day. It's just not a high priority to stop and proofread random comments. Your mileage may value. Or should I say you're mileage.
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spiraled into the stupid
It's a *external*
an external
I have mod points to dunk on stupid
Yes, that's exactly the quality of the idiot mods are here these days. Nobody cares how deep you dunk your stupid into your mods. It's par.
Now get off my lawn!
size (Score:1)
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Umm, why? 64 1/2 gig micro SD cards probably weigh less than the industrial strength rubber you've had in your wallet since school.
Re: size (Score:2)
Umm, why? 64 1/2 gig micro SD cards probably weigh less than the industrial strength rubber you've had in your wallet since school.
Yeah, but that's still only 32GB. You'd need 64000 (ish) for a 32TB drive ...
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anybody with common sense would be able to tell right away
Would you mind checking again just where it was sold?
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For some definitions of bulky and big. The actual flash chip or chips inside a 2.5" SSD take up very little space and could be multiples of their actual size if they actually made an attempt to fill the empty space with flash chips.
A 3.5" form factor could probably fit 30TB of flash, though heat dissipation might be a problem.
It might be kind of clunky to work with, but you could probably fit an entire RAID storage subsystem made up of NVMe modules into a 3.5" disk form factor.
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Samsung announced a 30TB drive in the 2.5 inch server form factor (same footprint as a laptop drive, but thicker) a few years ago, I can't seem to find anywhere with it in stock new anymore but I did find one used on ebay, so presumablly some were made/sold.
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What percentage of people have any clue where we are on the Moore's Law timeline and what the density per mm^2 of storage is these days? It's just as likely that they'd have a hard time imagining 64GB fitting in a package so small.
Ray [REDACTED] sounds like a great bloke (Score:1)
Ray [REDACTED] sounds like a great bloke
i noticed since walmart got a website that... (Score:2)
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walmart has started getting more creepy
Wait, wait, I saw this movie! The year as you remember it is... 1986, right?
Watch out for fake SD cards also (Score:2)
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They are found wherever 3rd party goods are sold. Some are relabeled SD cards and the packaging is very very similar to the real thing
They're everywhere on eBay. I got one a few years ago and then had to deal with the seller whining about the negative feedback I gave him*
* I don't think he intended to sell a fake SD card, but when he got a bunch of SD cards for an unrealistically low price he should have tested them himself before reselling them for a still unrealistically low price.
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Surprised? You haven't been to their site. (Score:2)
Amazon's site is chock-full of crap. Where does it all come from? No idea. Are they pulling it in from somewhere? Are they providing an API and letting someone push it? Couldn't tell you, haven't even tried to find out. But you can get almost all the same cheap Chinese shit you can get on Amazon, and for about the same prices. So maybe it comes from the same middlemen.
It would be surprising if there weren't a bunch of scammy crap hidden in that blizzard of shit. And very little that you can buy at Walmart i
Third party marketplaces need to die. (Score:3)
I hate to bring up regulation, but this third party seller crap that isn't even a business within the country needs to be regulated out of existence.
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EBAY is/was for people to resell their used goods (and scalp hard to find electronics lol). EBAY was ruined when it became flooded with cheap Chinese garbage.
You can find all of that on Aliexpress.
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EBAY is/was for people to resell their used goods ... EBAY was ruined when it became flooded with cheap Chinese garbage.
I use Ebay a lot. I just avoid the new stuff.
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I go to eBay or Amazon to buy cheap Chinese shit when I want it to come from a warehouse in the USA. While a small handful of Aliexpress sellers have US warehouses, almost everything on there is shipped direct from China. It's easy to forget that eBay substantially predates the existence of both Amazon and Aliexpress (or indeed, Alibaba, or Wish, or frankly practically any current e-commerce site) and used to be the only place to get that stuff. I've been using eBay since May of 2000. (1170 feedback, 100% p
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Walmart kind of solves this problem by listing their own validated supply chain stuff first in search results if they have anything in their database that matches a search AND they have a checkbox to limit search results to their own validated supply chain stuff. As a user, it is easy to identify and filter out third parties on Walmart but impossible to do on Amazon. But, yeah, nuking third party sellers from high orbit is the only real solution. I haven't heard anyone make an argument to make it against
Obvious fake (Score:2)
Everybody knows that you have to pay at least $45 for 30 TB.
h2testw (Score:2)
This has been around at least a decade, there's a linux port / fork or some such.
Writes data to every byte, reads it back to confirm it's good.
Takes a while, you should do this to any disk, INCLUDING hard drives if you've paid a lot for them. I just did it to 8x16TB Exos drives (and found a faulty, thanks to it)
Worth using so you know you can (probably) rely on the media even as it fills up.
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Heh' I remember back when people used to sell paper cutter like things to cut the knock into the side the disk to tell the drive it was high density media.
It actually worked too, to a point. What actually determined the density was the low-level format on the disk. So you could turn a double-density floppy in to high density floppy by cutting the slot and reformatting. The issue was the lower-density media was so labeled because the magnetic layer allowed to much bleeding into adjacent areas. So if you did
Re: h2testw (Score:2)
Yeah, we write (pseudo) random data to (pseudo) random sized files, filling the entire device and then read them back. It can take a while -
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/md0 1.3P 308T 1002T 24% /mnt/disk1
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Why waste the time when the price alone gives it away as a fake. h2testw is only relevant if you believe you're buying something which may be legitimate. There's no point testing a product that costs less than $2/TB in 2022
People _still_ fall for this? (Score:2)
I guess greed realiably causes blindness to reality...
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Anybody adult should know that things that look too good to be true usually are. Many children understand this as well.
Re: People _still_ fall for this? (Score:2)
Not a scam (Score:2)
Learn to read the fine print, it's clearly written in Chinese!
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I already have one of those built into my machine. I don't know just how big it is but so far it holds every backup I ever made and no sign of ever getting full. It's insanely fast, too.
Mountpoint is /dev/null
Visionary (Score:2)
Aliexpress Bait and Switch - Picture Scam (Score:2)
An old scam (Score:2)
This happened a while back, maybe even here on /., where a guy bought a external HD for a low price only to have the same issue. He took it apart and found a small flash drive and a big stainless nut epoxied to the chassis to give it some weight.
Yet another reason to never go to Walmart (Score:2)
Testing for this (Score:4)
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Seems like a lot of effort (Score:2)
8TB PLJF External SSD (Score:2)
Just bought one from Amazon for $79. Ariving today. I thought it hard to believe it was true but it's been along time since I bought a HD. I have two macs with 2TB between them to backup. I trust Amazon will refund me if its a scam.
it's a joke... (Score:2)
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Well, it is as strong as one would assume anti-covid-vaccine person to be :)