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.