I was told by my mother that the vendor asked her about the capacity, and then stuffed a given “device” into the outer shell. Lets look at one of the USB devices – as both were purchased from the same place in Golden Computer Centre and they feature “identical” looking memory. they are smaller than their stated size but have their controllers reprogrammed to appear larger).Įither product is dangerous – the former due to the fact that the functionally similar products tend to fail quicker and corrupt data – and the latter due to the fact the data was never stored in the first place.īut there are more dangers to these devices … The Devices Fakes proliferate the market – and by fakes, these can be one of several sorts – ones that look like genuine products with boxes, holograms, and printing and are functionally similar, and ones that really aren’t functionally as described (i.e. Seasoned veterans of buying flash memory would know that it’s a big risk to buy flash from eBay and from the streets of Hong Kong and China. They cost about AU$12 each, which is in the ballpark of what a reputable USB memory stick would cost – and the dealers (of course) were very reassuring of their quality.
My mother recently returned home from her trip to Hong Kong with a pair of ‘novelty’ “”16Gb”” USB keys as a present.