'Knockoff' Browser Extension Hides Sketchy Brands On Amazon (404media.co) 122
alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: A software developer made a Chrome and Firefox extension called Knockoff that automatically hides, grays out, or filters products from sketchy brands on Amazon, which highlights just how many shady brands are on the platform and how commonly they show up on searches for basic items. In just a few minutes of using the extension, Knockoff dimmed product listings for screwdrivers made by "SUNHZMCKP," spoons made by "SACATR," and a lamp made by "ROTTOGOON."
In a tweet announcing the extension, developer Josh Pigford wrote "Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY, and LUENX." The extension can also hide all sponsored product listings. The extension quickly went viral as a much-needed filter for people who still use Amazon and, for those who don't use Amazon because of its horrendous labor practices and other concerns, it is evidence of what an incredible wasteland the platform has become.
In a tweet announcing the extension, developer Josh Pigford wrote "Sorry to brands like WNPETHOME, EHEYCIGA, YXYL, LU&MN, JOYIN, TOMY, GODONLIF, YOOJEE, LINGTENG, LANEIGE, VISCOO, BIODANCE, COOFANDY, BALENNZ, TOSY, and LUENX." The extension can also hide all sponsored product listings. The extension quickly went viral as a much-needed filter for people who still use Amazon and, for those who don't use Amazon because of its horrendous labor practices and other concerns, it is evidence of what an incredible wasteland the platform has become.
YMMV - But the knockoffs have a legit market (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have to agree. Now, I really wish they'd make an actual brand name for themselves and label the products that way, but half the time those "SEGBDGEDC" brand items for things like screwdrivers, drills, etc actually work plenty good enough for home DIY type stuff. I wouldn't use them if I was using a tool every day for work but for around the house its fine.
To some degree "VEVOR" has started doing that though. A lot of the "cheap but ok" stuff has been started to be branded VEVOR pretty frequently.
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Agree, I buy a lot of fiber optic cables for work and many of the cheaper brands on there have been solid with no problems (Yutianhome is one in particular). While i try to prefer more "reputable" suppliers like LANShack I have to say the quality is comparable. Ditto for SFP adapters, Amazon is where I came across 10GTek and they have always been solid and reliable by my anecdotal experience.
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"Yutianhome"
See there is the trick, find companies out there that actually TRY to be human sounding instead of just random grouping of letters and numbers. This is usually the first sign that you're more likely to encounter legit yet cheap product. Vevor is... eh kinda easy to remember and their product listing prices look more like what an actual manufacturer would be charging to retailers buying their stock.
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Oh, also I have a pair of Coofandy 'business' drawstring pants. They're absolutely fucking comfortable and fit well.
Re:YMMV - But the knockoffs have a legit market (Score:4, Funny)
I really wish they'd make an actual brand name for themselves and label the products that way,
I recently bought a set of three Sheffield pocket knives for $20USD. I didn't even know there was a town named Sheffield in Guangdong province.
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I have a BearMoo magnifying glass. It works perfectly growlcow.
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I bought a 'VEVOR' binding machine, and it works fine.
Those punch a row of rectangular holes in a sheet of paper, then open the row of plastic fingers down the entire length of a tubular binder. c c c c c c c + = = = = = =, basically.
I use it to make bound notes for a game I'm playing.
Yeah, there's loose-leaf binders, but I've never had those fail to start shredding the holes in the paper.
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Knockoffs do have a legit market, but if I choose to buy them I prefer to do it on Aliexpress where I can cut out the middleman and save a few bucks (in exchange for slightly longer shipping times).
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Depends on whether I want to wait for the longer shipping.
For me, there are three classes of products:
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When you buy this stuff from Amazon, you are paying for Amazon's notoriously customer friendly return policy: If there is a problem (quality, did not arrive, etc.) Amazon gives you your money back.
There is also a measure of privacy protection when purchasing thru Amazon. Amazon filters thing like your email address from the seller -reducing spam. They do share address and telephone numbers with the seller if they are shipping direct (not from Amazon's FBA warehouses), but they prohibit direct contact by p
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It's not just the return policy you are paying for, it's the middle men.
You pay 10x as much (literally, many sellers seem to just take the AliExpress/Alibaba price and add an extra zero) and over a few purchases the 90% discount you get by buying direct from China far outweighs any losses due to defective or fraudulent products.
That said AliExpress is actually okay with returns now, at least for UK customers. Often you don't have to return things at all. You can always do a credit card chargeback on expensi
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Except we don't have to bother with importers now, we can easily just go direct to the source. The barriers that meant we needed them in the past have been removed.
Unless you are in the EU, in which case the 3 Euro per item group charge is ridiculous. Almost enough for me not to want to rejoin.
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The EU decided that to protect local middlemen they would introduce a 3 Euro charge per item type on packages being imported. It seems to have been targeted at sites like AliExpress and Temu. I'm sure they will sooner or later set up local distribution warehouses inside the EU - in fact they already have some, so that popular items and heavily discounted ones can be delivered more quickly and cheaply. I suppose that creates some jobs, but it must be very annoying for people buying less popular stuff who are
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So far as your domestic economy is concerned, middlemen may be beneficial, as some of what you spend stays at home and circulates instead of all of it leaving. I haven't put much thought into that though; it only just occurred to me and may be
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You know, there are these things called yard sales and flea markets where you can get forks, or entire sets, for less than what you pay on Amazon.
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I think this extension is a very cool idea.
That said... I own several shirts, a set of pajamas, and a sport coat from COOFANDY. They are cheap. They look good. They fit well. They are durable enough to have lasted several years of use so far.
Cheap chineseum is not necessarily bad... but it is not necessarily good either. It is cheap. The quality is a crapshoot.
Re: YMMV - But the knockoffs have a legit market (Score:1)
I don't mind Coofandy either. I have trouble finding clothes that fit sometimes, which requires ordering clothes from brick and mortar stores instead of buying in the store. I have some Coofandy items that fit well and are comfortable.
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Re: YMMV - But the knockoffs have a legit market (Score:1)
Lead, arsenic, hexavalent chromium, mercury all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of Chinese stainless steel is just a bunch of scrap metal alloyed into something that looks right. You never know if you get 201 stainless or some amalgamation of debased material.
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Yes, I'm pretty sure I saw YMMV brand dinner forks on Amazon!
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seafaring GRAVE ROBBERS (Score:2)
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Sometimes I don't mind cheap chinesium. I just bought a pack of 60 dinner forks because my kids inexplicably loose dinner forks. I don't care about Bokon, Tinnin, ZXVFY, or whatever made up brand it is. I know I'm buying cheap chinese stuff. If I was buying life-safety equipment, well, Amazon might not be the place to start anyway.
This, sometimes I am looking for cheap, no-name products. I really don't care who made my bin bags as long as they fit in the bin and aren't a total PITA to open. It's going to be the same terrible quality as you get from the supermarket but saves me a trip.
What I'm concerned about is, is that Panaphonics TV I'm buying a genuine Panaphonics TV? That's when you have to check it's not being sold by Dongfeng or XSFCDWS.
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Enjoy the heavy metals ;)
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would I pay more for the same stuff from a "reputable" brand
Reputation, specifically a local office, comes with liability which quite often drives independent quality control. Depending on the item those "same stuff" may look very different on the inside compared to the outside.
Just a personal example, I was looking at digital bluetooth thermometers for BBQs (the ones that get mounted in the lid) I bought one from a brand name for 75EUR. I saw the same one a few months later on Aliexpress for 15EUR and was curious so I bought it. They look the same, except I cut my finger on a sharp piece that was clearly poorly machined and didn't fit correctly in the casing of the Chinese import. Also the Chinese import thinks water boils at 90C where as "the same stuff but more expensive" says it's 100C. Which one is right?
Another generalised example, in the EU recently there was a case of a lot of kids play toys containing coloured sands having asbestos contamination. The reputable brands reached out to their customers with a product recall and immediately pulled the things from the shelves. In the meantime Amazon is still full of the listings for "the same stuff" and consumer groups are playing whack-a-mole trying to get Amazon to delist them as they keep popping up.
If your kid needs to recover medical expenses for lung cancer, what's the chance of Haoyu Xi Zhang from Mangya in Qinghai obeying the court to cover your medical expenses?
Or better still do you buy "the same stuff" when it comes to batteries, and does your home insurance cover fires caused by Chineseium-ion chemistry?
These things only *look* like they are the same stuff.
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Unless you need it very quickly, why pay the 10x mark-up from Amazon at all? Just copy the product image, search by image on AliExpress, and enjoy a 90% discount. Takes about 10 days to get to the UK, or less if you can find one that ships from a local warehouse.
TOMY is legit (Score:5, Informative)
TOMY is totally legit!!!!!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomy
https://us.tomy.com/
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Marketplace filter (Score:2)
I found a site that filters out marketplace sellers https://katrina.life/s/ [katrina.life]
See how little Amazon actually sells directly.
It's easy to do without an extension (Score:3)
All you need is common sense, skepticism and an understanding of how Amazon works.
Some cheap Chinese stuff sold by sellers with nonsense names is good enough.
Some is total crap.
It's easy to tell them apart.
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If you swing a hammer for a living, you know the difference between the brands. They feel different in your hand. The performance is irrelevant to a home user who only uses it occasionally, but a pro can tell the difference. The right tool can be used daily for years. The wrong one will cause RSI.
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This is wrong and literally dangerous.
Firstly a lot of people don't really understand the whole idea of a hybrid marketplace where it is a legit brand but also hosts ones selling dangerous crap. Especially most people don't realise that it's somehow fine for Amazon to sell stuff which is illegal. Amazon is hosting it, providing the storefront, processing the sale and payment. To most people that's selling.
And even if you do know, it's really hard to identify what's merely cheep cheese and actively dangerous
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It's easy to tell them apart.
Is it though? House fire statistics would indicate otherwise. Plenty of people buy low quality rubbish products with fake certifications and burn their house down.
Ublock Origin FTW (Score:3)
This is an outrage! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is an outrage! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: This is an outrage! (Score:2)
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The GP may have been pointing out that since Kodak doesn't make Scooters and Bell and Howell don't make fire extinguishers, you can't technically sue them either.
Remember TigerDirect? (Score:2)
Anyway in electronics there are different grades of quality. TigerDirect made a business selling the B and c grade stuff. Because of that they could undercut just about anyone but they often sold junk.
Think of it like how Intel bins their CPUs only it's stuff like the quality of the electrical wiring in the final product.
So the practice I think has more or less gone away for major brands. They have much better quality control s
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Yeah, but that will happen with your Kodak scooter and Bell and Howell Fire extinguisher too, which are the same exact products
They may be from the same factory, but there's a step involved "QA/QC" that is done by major brands that actually check for bees in the extinguisher, because they know they'll be sued out of existence if they get it wrong.
That's the dirty secret: Everything is made in China. The cost difference is quality control. Factories running mid-night product runs without oversight don't follow any of the checking processes that reputable companies do, including even their own factory based QA/QC (after all, no one i
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And yet they haven't been slapped on those products, and were in the past not associated with those products in any way. Point is it is often quite hard to distinguish real from China slop (check some of the other comments pointing out that some of TFS listed names are actually legit), but when an actual recognisable brand name is used, ... it's actually easier to identify.
Would you buy a HiFire BBQ temperature gauge? Maybe, maybe not. What do you know about them? Nothing. Would you buy a Kodak one? That's
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*Some bees may be hornets.
I would be terrified putting this out (Score:1)
As an American I don't have a hell of a lot of civil liberties left but I can't at least talk shit about bad companies. I mean for the time being and all...
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Hold Amazon Should Responisble for its Brands (Score:3, Insightful)
Paradox (Score:3)
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Need != want. Do you block ads? If so why? You know they are ads and you can skip past them right?
There's real benefit to not having your screen full of utter rubbish, whether you "need" it or just "want" it.
Uh, not sure these are really knock-offs? (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess it's all subject to interpretation. But to me, a true knock-off is defined as a product trying to trick someone into thinking it's one made by a name-brand manufacturer -- doing its best to copy-cat the original.
What I see on Amazon constantly are Chinese-made products that have no real equivalent I can find with brand-name alternatives, but they all like to use those "gibberish" names made of random letters. And in most cases? The exact same product, or a very slightly altered variant, is sold under multiple "gibberish" names. Pretty sure a lot of these come from the same Chinese factory but they market it under various brands to improve visibility and to pump up sales numbers?
Just one recent example would be one of the "power bank" type charges for your mobile devices that has built-in cables to work with USB-C, Lightning, Micro USB and then standard USB: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CF... [amazon.com]
Whoever VRURC is, I'm sure it's just another nonsense alphabetic name ... but I haven't seen one quite like this sold at retailers like Micro Center. I suspect it's partially because the Lightning connector is owned by Apple and you have to pay them to obtain certified ones to use in your products? Chinese vendors often just get around these extra costs by recycling/repurposing existing salvaged Lightning ports/cables. Helps allow them to sell these devices affordably.
Re:Uh, not sure these are really knock-offs? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole thing sounds pretty arbitrary. I've got an electric screwdriver with some name like "Goofun" on it that was clearly designed by engineers who wanted to make the best electric screwdriver they could. I've also got one from "Black and Decker" that is of much lower quality.
WTF is "Black and Decker" anyway? Or "Google?" "Microsoft" sounds like a sex joke, and last time I had "Coca-Cola" it didn't contain any of either.
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Black and Decker, you know... Duncan Black and Alonzo Decker?
Perhaps you've heard of them. Oh, wait, yes, you have heard of them, because they put their names on your screwdriver.
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That would be quite the trick. They've been dead over 70 years.
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Tip: Names don't evaporate when you die.
See also: Socrates, Noah, Lugh, Cleopatra, etc.
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And what's odd about Microcomputer Software?
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Does it? You seem very sure considering the recipe is a famous secret. And the Internet disagrees:
https://www.bbc.com/future/art... [bbc.com]
https://fox8.com/news/it-used-... [fox8.com]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
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There are way more flavors of Coke than I expected.
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Quality isn't the only issue. Liability is one. If a B&D tool starts burning houses down you can bet your wallet they'll issue a recall. If a Goofun electric screwdriver starts burning houses down you'll quickly find the company doesn't actually exist, customers aren't informed, and those people who used what is likely a product with fake certifications have no recourse and hope to god they have a Chinesium rider on their home insurance policy.
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Hm....
https://www.reddit.com/r/Const... [reddit.com]
They do issue recalls. Quite a few. And we all carefully monitor recall notices for our screwdrivers, right?
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I agree these are often not knock-offs.
Often they're nearly identical but from different factories, but it's the same CAD drawings for all the parts that are shared between factories as part of their social network.
Sometimes you'll find one that's nearly identical but especially bad, falls apart, or doesn't work at all. And you might wonder about QA, but often there is no QA; it's presumed that it's a working design, and they only QA the designs, not the output.
Sometimes you find one that has some small des
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And if you search it sometimes you can find the exact same item sold on Aliexpress or Amazon with a strange brand.
Re: Uh, not sure these are really knock-offs? (Score:2)
I wanted to see ... (Score:2)
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You can use the Google Chrome extensions store from Edge and install any add-on directly. Edge is really just Chrome.
Amazon Basics (Score:2)
*poof*...gone
Too late (Score:2)
This extension may have helped back around 2016 when Amazon was starting its enshitification campaign. But today's Amazon, no way in hell I'm wasting my money on that site. It has turned into a Chinesium flea market full of cockroaches.
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Can't blame the Chinese. Or really Amazon. They are only selling what Americans are demanding.
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When most people nearly-blindly choose one of the first search results, you can blame the company deciding which entries are listed first.
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I would agree, except that in most cases the brick & mortar specialty store that used to sell the higher quality product doesn't exist anymore. In the cases where a quality product is still manufactured, I can usually go the the company's website and buy it direct, or buy it from the company's official Amazon storefront for less .
At a box store, the products are the same as the ones on Amazon, but more expensive. Though you can at least take a closer look at what they skimped on.
What I find funny is th
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"except that in most cases the brick & mortar specialty store that used to sell the higher quality product doesn't exist anymore"
This right here. Local markets have been decimated. I would much rather pay more for better quality. Not all Americans want the cheap Chinese shit.
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Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a basic clock radio that wasn't made in China? And isn't horrible?
We f-d up.
OEM dropshippers (Score:2)
That's what most of those brands seem to be: dropshippers carrying OEM versions of products made for larger and more well-known brands. I'm used to dealing with that, techies have after all been getting OEM products from China et. al. since forever since they're often exactly the same thing as the name brands just without the branding on the case. The explosion of different "brands" on Amazon just highlights the same problem we had back then: distinguishing the reliable ones (who sold the OEM version of the
Re: OEM dropshippers (Score:2)
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None of the middlemen are in a position to do that. It's all done by the manufacturer to name-brand specs. All the OEM does is add 25% to the production runs and sell the excess to the dropshippers. Changing the internals in any way would involve setting up a different production line, and that's too expensive compared to increasing capacity on an existing line. The economics are what made it appealing to buy grey-market electronics from Asia.
Other consumer goods, though, the economics are different. True c
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Knockoff (Score:1)
Lawsuits incoming? (Score:2)
The first false positive may be expensive for them. Maybe even some true positives if the company claims something like anti-competitive behavior. And the users risk that the extension developer can arbitrarily blacklist any brand they dislike for them and they won't even know.
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Sue for what, stating an opinion?
The extension allows users to tag a flagged company as legit. I suspect the devs have a system that if a flagged name is deemed legit by enough users it will be evaluated by a human and then whitelisted.
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Slander, anti-competitive behavior, and quite a few other things a lawyer can come up with. Some of them may not hold in court, but do you want to prove that in court? You are entitled to an opinion, but you can get in a lot of trouble if you state as fact that something would be a "sketch brand".
Simple heuristic (Score:2)
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But my favorite is how those 37 products all have the same pic, the same text, same everything except the "brand".
Maybe those brand names are actually anagrams for the Chinese equivalents of, "I pulled this out of the dumpster behind the factory"?
Still?? (Score:2)
>"The extension quickly went viral as a much-needed filter for people who still use Amazon"
Who "still use Amazon"? As opposed to what? Walmart?? Is buying from Amazon not a thing anymore and I somehow missed it?
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Boomeresque (Score:1)
LUENX isn't a knockoff (Score:3)
I'm on my third set of LUENX sunglasses. When I inevitably lose this pair (the fate of all my sunglasses), I'll probably buy another. I want purple shiny polarized glasses, they sell those. The say LUENX on the sides. The microfiber cloth that comes with them says LUENX. The little test card for polarization says LUENX (you can only read it through polarized lenses, of course).
So how are these a sketchy brand, or a knockoff, or whatever? These things work fine, arrive at my door the next day, and are like 15 bucks. Am I to believe that these are somehow a bad buy for 15 bucks? Am I to be enraged that I could probably get them for 9 dollars if I went directly to their website, or to alibaba or something?
Anyone have a suggestion for a nice pair of shiny purple polarized sunglasses- ones that aren't Luxotica (aka EssilorLuxottica these days)?
"Knockoff" brands (Score:1)
Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny.
Project is a copy of AmazonBrandFilter plug-in (Score:4, Interesting)
Saw this on Hacker News yesterday too. I wish the poster would have read some of the first comments where the author of project "AmazonBrandFilter" posts about how this project is essentially just grabbing his list.
I just installed "AmazonBrandFilter" and it seems to work: https://github.com/chris-mosle... [github.com]
Someone mentioned UBlock Origin also does this but I'm running that too and it didn't block as aggressively (if at all) as this plugin.
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At least Knockoff mentions that in their readme:
Research that shaped this design: AmazonBrandFilter (allowlist approach; its MIT-licensed community list seeded Knockoff's own), SoldBy (seller-country lookup and its rate-limit lessons), and The Markup's Amazon Brand Detector. Knockoff's contribution is combining a community allowlist with a heuristic scorer, with the allowlist as veto.
I hope it blocks amazon products (Score:2)
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Yep this is the problem. People who are saying "but COOFANDY is a real brand" are missing the point. They were not brands before Amazon provided the tools and targeting to allow them to flourish at extreme discounts. China can manufacture pretty much anything you want: hats, cat shoes, missiles, underwear, cars, you name it. The problem is connecting the manufacturers to the global market. Normally domestic name-brands do all the design and have the prototyping and manufacturing done in China, Vietnam or an
so what (Score:2)
There are 25,356 brand names for the exact same Chinese product made by one of the only 3 companies in China who actually makes it. Fake guid brand names are the easy way to avoid paying for a trademark search if you are a little guy trying to do business on Amazon.