When you’ve looked for exterior SSDs on Amazon.com just lately, you could have observed one thing bizarre: combined in with the 1TB and 2TB drives from manufacturers like Samsung and SanDisk are a bunch of listings for 16TB SSDs, principally round $100, and with surprisingly excessive consumer scores. Each single one is a rip-off, even when they’re shipped by Amazon.

The Verge confirmed that a number of pretend 16TB drives confirmed up on the primary web page of outcomes for “exterior SSD,” and over half the outcomes for “16TB SSD” had been fakes — the remainder had been both 16TB enterprise exhausting drives, multi-drive enclosures, and one precise 16TB exterior drive, which prices $2,400 and incorporates two 8TB SSDs. Whereas the highest pretend had a 3.6-star score, the subsequent two had been 4.8 and 4.2, respectively. How are such apparent fakes getting such excessive scores?

It’s the rip-off Hendrickson calls “evaluation merging,” and Shopper Experiences calls “evaluation hijacking.” As Hendrickson explains, some third-party sellers take previous listings and change them with new objects, leaving the opinions however altering all the pieces else. A fast scan of 1 pretend 16TB drive itemizing confirmed five-star opinions for laptop computer chargers, basketball backpacks, stickers, display screen protectors, Mardi Gras beads, and mousepads. The sellers collect good opinions for reasonable generic merchandise, swap in a dearer pretend, after which take it down when dangerous opinions begin piling up.

Hendrickson says he reported the pretend SSD to Amazon and is awaiting their response. Whereas a few of the listings turned “unavailable” after linking Amazon to them, although, some had been nonetheless up. One was changed by a brand new product altogether.

This isn’t a brand new trick. In 2019, an Amazon spokesperson advised Shopper Experiences they’d spent over $400 million to handle the issue in a single yr alone. “Final yr, we prevented greater than 13 million makes an attempt to go away an inauthentic evaluation and we took motion in opposition to greater than 5 million dangerous actors trying to govern opinions,” they mentioned on the time.

And but, practically 4 years later, it continues to be a problem.

“The previous maxim stays true: if it’s too good to be true, it most likely isn’t,” warns Hendrickson. “When you’re uncertain, test the opinions intently. Do they match as much as the product? If not, run.”

A 16TB SSD for $100? Too good to be true. However you may get a extremely quick 1TB exterior SSD for about $100. Simply stick with respected storage manufacturers like SanDisk, Samsung, and Western Digital. And don’t neglect to learn the opinions.