The counterfeit game is stepping up and gone are the days when you could shrewdly spot the PlayStation logo spelled PloyStation. The real scams are the ones which are out to defraud you – and that means counterfeits looking exactly like the real thing, down to the hologram certificate on the packaging.

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is, but then again, scammers are getting round this too with a ‘close to market price’ for their counterfeit goods on eBay. Plus there’s plenty of opportunities to hack eBay accounts and assume the identity of reputable dealers.

Perhaps the best advice is Know your source. Avoid online merchants who you don’t know, a website with spelling mistakes on their homepage is an instant giveaway – reputable dealers can afford a proof reader and Chinese tricksters are notoriously bad spellers. A whopping 87% of all fake IT originate from China.

This makes it harder for consumers to trust the pre-owned used market in particular. Trade 2 save, where customers will be able to buy sell and trade consumer electronics gaming products and cellphones is helping to combat this by stringently testing every product they buy off of the public. Testers are  especially trained in spotting counterfeits, from checking screw fittings, hardware analysis, to micro components. A whole array of counterfeits are flooding the market from China, especially so for mobile or cell phones, DVD or blu-ray movies, PC Hardware in particular - it’s a growing and worrying trend that is also attacking the very best outlets who don’t test each and every product.

              China remains counterfeit central — more fake products of all kinds come from China than from the rest of the world combined.

The growing counterfeiting problem is the dark side of the incredible cheapness of PCs these days. The driving force is consumers and businesses who view PCs as commodities to be purchased based on price, rather than quality and reliability. Declining margins force OEMs to seek ever cheaper suppliers, which in turn seek out less expensive components. Often, the cheapest part is the fakest part.

             One in ten IT products sold is fake. (AGMA)

It’s possible to buy a fully counterfeit PC and think it’s original equipment. The Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) says one in ten IT products sold is fake. But even a computer sold legitimately by a brand-name outfit might have a counterfeit motherboard. And even if the motherboard is real, various chips and parts on that board might be fake.

No company – (not even the Best Buys or Walmarts) — can track down and verify the authenticity of every component.

          Testing is both extremely expensive and very time consuming.

Any company that tests products before passing them on is in a good position to spot a larger percentage of fakes, however a typical PC contains thousands of counterfeitable parts.

Up to date photographs of known conterfeits, procedures for spotting them, along with hardware analysis, chipset removal and testing all help to ensure that even the most realistic fakes won’t get through the screening process.

Organizations with strict testing procedures are unlikely to be a primary target of the fraudsters, who prefer to bask in relative anonymity of auction sites like eBay.

A massive crackdown at U.S. and European airports in December 2007 yielded some 360,000 fake electronic components worth $1.3 billion, including phony Intel chips and about 40 other major brands.

Such high-visibility busts however, mask the difficulty in stopping counterfeit components.

The ugly truth is that you can never be 100% certain that any PC you buy contains all legitimate components. But you can minimize the risk by shopping for reliability, not just low price.

Some of the poorest communities in developing countries are swamped by e-waste from the west. This is old news. But so too is legislation to abolish this growing trade.

Back in 2005, members of Congress formed an “e-waste working group,” hoping to jump-start a federal recycling system to curb the e-waste traffickers. The head of that group, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), proposed the National Computer Recycling Act.

It was designed to establish a grant and fee program through the Environmental Protection Agency to encourage and promote the recycling of used computers and to promote the development of a national infrastructure for the recycling of used computers, and for other purposes.
To help fund the national recycling program a fee would be taken from the retail sales of certain electronics.

Good news for the environmentalists, but not so for the consumer electronics giants who would foot the ‘recycling tax’.

The act soon ran into ‘implementation issues’, and three years later is still under review (along with the Palmer’s Act of 1864 which requires Amish to dress more fashionably).

Individual States have tried to follow European Legislation

Thirteen states including California, Washington, Maine, and Minnesota have agreed in principal to e-waste laws and support among other states is growing, in addition to new research initiatives.

In September 2007, the Green Chemistry Research and Development Act was proposed, looking to authorize $165 million over three years for research into products that reduce or eliminate hazardous waste. Sadly, however, the bill still awaiting a Senate vote, while lobbyists bide their time picking at its seams.

The Europeans got there in the end

Considering the sheer bureaucratic complexities of the European Union, after many delays, they did manage to set in stone the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations governing the safe disposal of IT equipment. The new legislation went into effect July 1st, 2007.

Under the new law, electrical and electronic producers, rebranders and importers must pay for the responsible disposal and recycling of their goods. (It’s a bit like getting wriggly’s to chisel all their chewing gum off of pavements).
The first of its kind, but certainly not the last, the WEEE directive is setting the stage for future legislation.
With the high cost of disposing e-waste safely, it’s hardly surprising that the problem is still growing at an alarming rate - lower environmental standards and working conditions in China, India, Kenya and elsewhere have led to an exponential influx of e-waste, often entering through lucrative illegal channels.

The majority of e-waste ends up being broken down by ill-equipped laborers working under hazardous conditions.

A typical router or switch may contain more than 2 percent lead by weight and up to 38 separate chemical elements.

The Simplest solutions are often the most easily overlooked

In an effort to combat e-waste, reuse has become a new priority in the consumer market. Organizations including Apple, Dell, HP, and Sony are already instigating change by establishing trade-in and recycling programs ahead of legislation. With the shortening of product life cycles, consumers can also buy, sell or trade used consumer electronics and computers at trading portals. By doing this, a product’s lifespan can be increased by up to 4 times, significantly lowering the amount of ewaste heading for China.

              Gartner estimates the energy from manufacturing, distribution and use of information and communications technology emits approximately 2 percent of total global carbon dioxide, equal to the emissions from the entire airline industry.

Gartner analyst Simon Mingay estimates that one in every dozen computers used worldwide is a “secondary computer,” and nearly 152.5 million used systems are shipped annually. The research firm predicts that both the home and professional markets for secondary PC’s will continue to see growth in the next several years, fueled by better performance, longer system life and recycling legislation that would give companies greater incentives for reuse and recycling.

Buying pre-owned hardware is not only a cost effective way to reduce IT costs, it is also perfectly aligned with e-waste reduction.

Organizations of all kinds can benefit from reuse, in ways that tangibly affect the bottom line and intangibly help save the environment.

In order for this to happen, more pressure needs to be implemented to enforce the kind of environment which would make widespread reuse both attractive and feasible.

The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was originally passed in 1970 to illiminate the ill effects brought about by organized crime.
Since the 1980’s, however, civil lawyers have taken advantage of section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows civil claims to be brought by any person injured in their business or property by reason of a RICO violation.

Is eBay, by making so much of its income by selling known counterfeit and/or stolen goods, in fact a criminal conspiracy under the terms of the RICO act?

Scott Augenbaum, supervisory special agent for the FBI Cybercrime Fraud unit in Washington, D.C. is adament on the subject “The vast majority (of conterfeit IT products in circulation) is still being purchased from gray market, uncertified resellers that unload their goods on eBay at extremely low prices,”

       Counterfeit products account for nearly 10% of the overall IT products market.

Counterfeit Cisco equipment, known in the industry as “Chisco” (counterfeit Cisco equipment originating in China) are being created at an alarming rate. According to a white paper by AGMA and consulting company KPMG, counterfeit products account for nearly 10% of the overall IT products market. That’s $100 billion in fake memory sticks, drives, monitors, networking gear and other IT products in circulation.

China’s policies concerning intellectual property infringement and state-sanctioned piracy have become a growing global concern. Tremendous growth of the network hardware secondary market, as well as an upturn in Chinese manufacturing have combined to push these fears to new heights. The ease at which counterfeits can be sold on eBay may be helping to encourage growth in a market that eBay is certainly making money from. A question which must be asked is how much of these profits are being redirected to help fight this growing internet phenomenon?

As a result, network managers are often avoiding pre-owned hardware from eBay simply because it is too difficult to identify counterfeit equipment. Unless products can be checked by a third party, counterfeit fraud on eBay will continue. An alternative for network managers wanting to save money and have the confidence to buy used or pre-nwed is to buy off of trading portal where products are checked and tested by professionals who can attest to them being genuine. At trade 2 save, consumers will be able to buy sell or trade their computers, cameras, cell phones, games and movies. When they sell them to trade 2 save, every product they buy is tested and give a one year warranty before being sold on. Spotting counterfeits at trade 2 save will be a top priority in procedure and training.

One of the worst offenders on the eBay site, the computer software category is unfortunately littered with counterfeit and pirated goods. Electronic entertainment media of all kinds is commonly sold illegally on eBay, whether in the form of pirated/unlicensed copies, or in the form of import or export-restricted goods.

In Wisconsin 6 defendants were sentenced in April for selling a combined total of more than $25,000,000 worth of counterfeit computer software on eBay.
eBay may well have profited substantially from these transactions and we have not been able to ascertain whether or not eBay has returned these fund to either law enforcement agencies or the many thousands of eBay buyers who were defrauded in good faith.

It’s what we’re being told to do by every consumer electronics institution on the block, from Best Buy to Apple. But what actually happens to that monitor or PC once we drop it off and slip back into our Prius’s, tutting smugly at passing Hummers?

Well don’t feel so green greenies, because although your PC will no longer end up in a landfill somewhere in Alabama, it WILL be sold by the tonnage (for a healthy profit I might add) to the highest bidding e-waste merchant, who’ll then pile it high on a gas guzzling tanker to be shipped off to Hong Kong. From there it will be resold to another trader until it eventually ends up on the swelling e-waste dumps of China.

Yes - these pictures are real, and these children do die of lead and mercury poisoning as they blow-torch or hack their way through millions of circuit boards.

Still - there are plenty of children where she came from when she reaches a life expectancy of 15 - and plenty of throw-away PCs, laptops, monitors, MP3 players, speakers, headphones, cellphones etc to grow the never ending mountain of e-waste being created to the rapturous sound of iTunes.

I make no secret of my suspicion of recycling programs and the greener than green recycling stores, many of whom actually charge to recycle your e-waste, only to make a clean (or dirty) profit as they shift it along the dirt never ending conveyor belt to China.

Is there an alternative? For an eight year old PC maybe not - none of the internals are up to date, but the real crime is that most of the stuff ending up on e-waste dumps today are between 2 and 3 years old.

The bottom line is that most people today upgrade after about a year or so and leave their old laptop or cellphone lying around in a bottom draw until it’s no longer any good to anyone - before driving down to that (ever so lovely) environmental store with green tea and rose who’ll take it off your hands for $15 - you’ll get back into your Prius, tut at a Hummer and - well I think we’ve been here several million consumers before - Oh what a gravy train - an industry booming at both ends!

If people sold their one or two year old digital cameras, PCs, laptops, cellphones as pre-owned, and if possible, upgraded to another pre-owned but up to date model, then the e-waste merchants would suddenly find their business cut by 75% within a couple of years. The buy, sell or trade pre-owned model as advocated by new trading portal trade 2 save needs to feature strongly in the minds of Americans if the problem of ewaste is to be tackled in the short to medium term.

The downside to this, of course, is that the profits of Sony, Apple, Samsung and Acer among others would suffer from fewer sales. But then, is this such a terrible thing? We love the things they give us, but at some point we have to conclude that it may be too much of a good thing.

Upgrading to stay ahead with technology is becoming more and more important. It’s about time that as Americans we started to do it responsibly - oh and guess what - you’ll say a fist full of dollars too!

At a time when everyone is looking for ways to save money, what could be better than saving money and helping to save the planet at the same time. This is what you can do when you trade in your old model and upgrade it to a model you want which is pre-owned and works and looks perfectly fine.

OK, so you won’t have the self gratifying pleasure of pulling a virginal iPod out of the factory sealed sleave for the very first time, but hey, you’ll have a staggering effect on the global e-waste crisis, if you and a few million other Americans thought the same way.

And after a few days of owning it, you’d have forgotten you bought it pre-owned in the first place!
Upgrading to stay ahead is paramount for tech enthusiasts, many of whom are now upgrading their first generation iPhone after just 6-8 months of use.

You’d be surprised what you can find pre-owned. Many people may use a cellphone for a month, or even less and want to get something else, or perhaps a newer model has just come out. Maybe they were given a free upgrade by their phone company and are quite happy with the one they’ve got.

Virtually anything that has been on the market for a few weeks is available pre-owned in a like new condition.

So why does buy it pre-owned reduce e-waste and your carbon footprint? Buying it pre-owned means that you are reducing the demand for that product by one unit.

And if you go ahead and trade it in or sell it to someone else down the line, you are reducing the demand for a new one to be sold to someone else by another unit again (because he’s buying a pre-owned one off you instead of a new one from Best Buy).

When you trade it in and purchase another pre-owned, again, you are reducing the demand for another product too – and so the cycle continues. Now imagine a few million consumers having the same idea?

Each MP3 player, for example, takes roughly 300 lbs of CO2 to produce. Then there’s the small matter of transportation by road and shipping to the store (from China usually) and ultimately to you. Millions of products – millions of upgrades, millions of tons of e-waste every year, the cycle is endless.

When you buy pre-owned instead of new it means that at the end of the product’s life, there will 3 to 4 times less of that product ending up as e-waste, because as you have reduced the demand, less is being produced as a consequence, especially when you are one of thousands of consumers wanting to save money when they upgrade, and reduce their carbon footprint in the process.

But it’s not just millions of tons of less e-waste every year. China’s demand for oil projected over the next decade has created the speculative price surges we see today. What most people don’t know is that this isn’t totally the blame of Chinese People lining outside the Cadillac showroom in Beijing.

Manufacturing is the biggest single consumer of oil in China, and the biggest (and fastest growing) sector of manufacturing is, yes you guessed it, consumer electronics.

Steve Jobs would love you to upgrade every time he brings out a new iPod or iPhone. Well, providing you trade in your old model (and keep it nice for the next person) and then buy a pre-owned upgrade that someone else may have had for a few weeks or months, then you’ll be doing exactly what he wants and saving money and the planet in the process. Not sure he’d be as happy as I’m suggesting though.

Trading portals like trade 2 save will enable consumers to buy, sell and trade their used electronics, computers, games and movies - with more confidence and for better value so they can upgrade readily while still saving money and reducing ewaste.