What do you think of USB Flash Drive baiting?

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Master Baiter Joined: 19 Jul 2015 Posts: 106

On sites like eBay and Amazon you might be aware of these fake drives. They are advertised at a large capacity and are very cheap eg 256GB for £8.

So the bait would go like this:

1. Buy a USB flash drive from ebay you know is fake (eg is far cheaper than what it should cost for its advertised capacity)

2. When it arrives test it for its real capacity (eg use H2testw) and contact the seller showing them your findings and asking for a refund. The seller might offer a partial refund but make it clear the drives are unusable and you want a full refund.

3. You will receive a refund and get to keep the drive too (the sellers usually don't even want them back)

4. Leave negative feedback for them to warn other buyers. The seller may then send you a message begging you to change the feedback.

5. If you use the drive as it is your data will end up being corrupt, but what you can do is delete the partition and create a partition the same size as the real capacity (H2testw will let you know the real capacity). Then after doing so retest it. Now the drive should be ok to use

Benefits:

1. Sellers who sell these on eBay rely heavily on lots of positive feedback (it gives them discounts) so negative feedback will greatly inconvenience them.

2. Your feedback warns others of the scam.

3. You get a small capacity USB flash drive out of it.

Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:24 am

I don't think that's baiting. Where I live, it's called stealing.

You're intentionally seeking out a seller to get a flash drive, for free, based on the full refund. Whether they are a criminal or not, it's not relevant. You are intentionally committing a crime.

Additionally, there's a scam going around, typically on eBay where they are turning you into a money mule.

How?

Fraudsters take a stolen identity (like from all the major corporate hacks) and open a credit card account in this name. After, they open an eBay account and list some item like this for an extremely cheap price. When someone orders the item via eBay, the scammer then takes the stolen credit card info and orders from the make/manufacturer/wholesaler/whatever/legit site and has it shipped.

You pay the fraudster via eBay and the stolen credit card account pays for the actual item. The criminals don't care about that stolen credit card, but they have just used it to receive money from you.

It's a growing scam on sites like these. Also...illegal.

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