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Sell your old graphics cards, or buy used ones, from a reliable source thanks to Jawa. Check them out at https://jawa.link/LTTMar
A high end GPU for less than 50% the going rate? Of course it’s a scam! But there’s so many safeguards in place these days, how could the scammer hope to keep your money?
Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1604758-this-gpu-scam-is-almost-impossible-to-detect/
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Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:19 TL;DR?
2:09 Why It Works
4:10 How did we get here?
4:29 Marketplaces and Drop Shipping
6:19 Tracking Numbers
9:51 I've got a theory
12:30 In Our Case...
15:06 Credits
Sell your old graphics cards, or buy used ones, from a reliable source thanks to Jawa. Check them out at https://jawa.link/LTTMar
A high end GPU for less than 50% the going rate? Of course it’s a scam! But there’s so many safeguards in place these days, how could the scammer hope to keep your money?
Discuss on the forum: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1604758-this-gpu-scam-is-almost-impossible-to-detect/
► GET OUR MERCH: https://lttstore.com
► GET EXCLUSIVE CONTENT ON FLOATPLANE: https://lmg.gg/lttfloatplane
► GET A VPN: http://www.piavpn.com/linus
► SPONSORS, AFFILIATES, AND PARTNERS: https://lmg.gg/partners
Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.
CHAPTERS
---------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro
1:19 TL;DR?
2:09 Why It Works
4:10 How did we get here?
4:29 Marketplaces and Drop Shipping
6:19 Tracking Numbers
9:51 I've got a theory
12:30 In Our Case...
15:06 Credits
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00You guys aren't gonna believe the deal I just got.
00:03800 bucks for a brand new RTX 4090 on eBay.
00:12Oh, well, guess it was too good to be true.
00:16But no worries, eBay, Amazon, even AliExpress,
00:21they've got robust buyer protection schemes
00:23that make it simple to get your money back
00:25if your product doesn't show up or isn't as advertised.
00:29So the question then is,
00:31why are these scam listings still all over these platforms
00:35if they can't possibly work?
00:37I had to find out for myself.
00:39So I hit buy it now on an obvious fake listing
00:42and, well, it didn't happen exactly like we just showed,
00:46but we did learn a ton about how scammers
00:49are operating on these platforms
00:50and how they could still get your money
00:54and leave you empty-handed.
00:56But it's totally avoidable without sponsor Java.
00:58Got four?
01:00I'm not Linus.
01:01Java is a legit marketplace
01:02for selling and buying PC parts like GPUs.
01:05Not only do they have PC experts screening listings,
01:08but they also offer refunds if you receive a brick.
01:19This topic originally came up on the WAN Show
01:21when a viewer pointed us to this listing and asked,
01:24hey, what gives with this?
01:26And then I impulsively responded with, I don't know.
01:29Let's order it and find out.
01:31Well, we didn't even get as far as placing our order
01:34before another helpful viewer reached out
01:36and laid out how they almost lost their money
01:40with a similar listing.
01:41As it turns out, these scammers have found some ways
01:44to get valid tracking numbers
01:46without actually shipping you anything.
01:49We'll get to the how later,
01:51but what you need to know for now
01:52is they can just pick a tracking number
01:54that's going to your city
01:57and then give that to eBay or another marketplace seller
01:59to prove delivery,
02:01making it much more difficult for you to file a dispute.
02:04But like, that shouldn't work, right?
02:08Well, whatever the reason for it,
02:10have you noticed how couriers give less and less information
02:13about a shipment these days?
02:15Forget about a zip code.
02:17You're lucky to even get an origin and destination city.
02:20And because eBay can't see the specifics
02:22of the tracking number that our scammer provides them,
02:25any delivery to roughly the same area
02:27and roughly the same timeframe
02:29will make it seem like the seller has done their job.
02:33So dispute closed, but here's the problem.
02:36You still don't have your GPU or your money.
02:40So what can you do?
02:42Reaching out to the scammer is a waste of time.
02:44They already know it's a scam
02:46and you could try to escalate your dispute with eBay,
02:49but how do you prove that you didn't get your shipment?
02:52The tracking says you did, plain as day.
02:54Well, okay, how about the courier then?
02:56Surely they can see that the tracking number
02:58has nothing to do with you, and they can,
03:01but that's actually a problem too,
03:03because they're not supposed to give out information
03:06about shipments that seemingly have nothing to do with you.
03:10And then even if you do convince
03:12the courier's support representative
03:13that your story is true,
03:15eBay is gonna want something tangible,
03:17not just an email from a meat-based chat bot.
03:21So what happened with our viewer then
03:23is they ended up having to physically go to the UPS store
03:27and convince an agent there to provide a note
03:30on UPS letterhead that stated that the tracking number
03:33that the seller provided
03:35was not associated with the buyer's address.
03:38Only when that was scanned and sent to eBay
03:41was a refund finally approved.
03:43So how does the scam work?
03:45Well, in a nutshell, the scammer hopes
03:48that either you aren't persistent enough
03:50to go get that hard evidence,
03:52or that the courier's support team
03:54is too stubborn to give it to you.
03:55Now, I think that many of us would be pretty persistent
03:58when it comes to recovering that amount of money,
04:01but here's the thing.
04:02If a scam didn't work, nobody would be trying to pull it.
04:06All right, that's the short version.
04:08But this scam didn't just pop fully formed
04:11into someone's brain.
04:12So how did we get here?
04:13Well, it's kind of a funny story, because get this,
04:16it didn't actually start out as a scam.
04:19Rather, it started as a clever way
04:22to deal with marketplace restrictions.
04:23So before we get into that,
04:25let's do a quick refresher on online marketplaces
04:28and drop shipping.
04:29I'm sure you've seen these little sold by notices
04:32when you shop on basically
04:33any major online retailer these days.
04:35Well, just like eBay,
04:37these sites are acting as marketplaces.
04:40The benefit for smaller sellers
04:42is it allows them to list and sell their items
04:45on large recognizable brand name stores
04:48in order to reach a wider customer base.
04:50The benefit for the marketplace
04:52is they get a cut of every sale
04:54without needing to do inconvenient and costly things
04:57like maintaining inventory,
04:58or in some cases, even fulfilling the orders.
05:01This system allows just about anyone
05:04to list their product on say, bestbuy.com.
05:07But hold on, they're gonna need a warehouse
05:09and a logistics team, right?
05:11Nope.
05:12Thanks to drop shipping services,
05:14the seller can just give the marketplace
05:16a list of items and inventory that they have access to
05:20through third-party warehouses,
05:21and then they wait for someone to place an order,
05:24quickly buy it from a supplier who packages it up,
05:27sticks the seller's logo on it, usually for an extra fee,
05:30and then ships the product to you.
05:32In these cases, neither the retail site that you used
05:36nor the seller ever even touched the product
05:38that they sold you.
05:40It is nothing like buying from lttstore.com,
05:43where you can check out our new labs collection
05:45and rest assured that we're involved
05:46in every step of the process,
05:47from design, to ordering, to warehousing,
05:50to shipping, to customer service.
05:52Sorry, where was I?
05:53Oh, right, sorry.
05:54Marketplaces.
05:56In spite of this lack of control,
05:58marketplaces, they still wanna keep their brand respectable.
06:01So they do take precautions to protect their customers.
06:04Like for example, holding onto the money
06:06for a couple of weeks to ensure
06:08that the order actually gets delivered,
06:10or insisting that the seller provide a tracking number
06:13for the shipment.
06:14And it's that last point that brings us finally
06:18to the tracking number piece of the puzzle.
06:19See, no retailer likes to send you off platform.
06:23So when you wanna track your order,
06:25they like to pull the tracking details
06:27from the courier's API,
06:29and then wrap it up in their own pretty little interface.
06:31Well, that means that they need to limit their sellers
06:35to the couriers that they have integrated into their site.
06:38Now sellers mostly played along at first,
06:40but as marketplace fees have risen,
06:43sellers have felt the need to get more creative
06:46to preserve their profitability.
06:48Say for example, by using discount couriers
06:51that their marketplace doesn't support.
06:53Well, somewhere along the line,
06:54someone had the bright idea to use discount Joe's delivery,
06:58but then give the marketplace a made up string of numbers
07:01and hope that as long as the item arrives,
07:04no one's gonna notice or care.
07:06And that worked, at least for a little while.
07:09But then the marketplaces wised up
07:11and they demanded that the tracking number be valid.
07:14Okay, so now our sellers need
07:16a more legit fake tracking number.
07:18How do they get it?
07:19Well, a quick Google search shows
07:21how these numbers are formatted
07:22and most couriers will let you check
07:25dozens of tracking numbers at a time on their website,
07:27hundreds if you use their API.
07:29So what if we just write a bot that generates
07:32and then checks tracking numbers,
07:34logging any that work into a database
07:35so that we can use them later.
07:38But Linus you say,
07:39writing that bot could take dozens of minutes
07:42if you've never heard of chat GPT.
07:45Well, don't worry, there's an even easier way.
07:47A quick search surfaced a wide selection
07:49of professional looking websites
07:51that offer valid active tracking numbers for sale.
07:54I'm not talking about the dark web here guys,
07:56this is plain old boring internet.
07:58Let me show you.
07:59All I gotta do is select a destination city,
08:02let's say Surrey, Canada.
08:04I can specify an approximate estimated delivery date range,
08:09shipment status in transit
08:11and I want it to come from the States.
08:12I click get tracking number and...
08:20There it is.
08:21Origin Kernersville, US shipped yesterday.
08:25You can even pick details
08:26like the approximate weight of the package
08:28if you wanna get fancy.
08:29And that's it.
08:30We now have the tracking number for someone else's shipment
08:33for the low, low price of just 25 freedom cents.
08:37Now, some of these sites claim
08:39that you are trading tracking numbers
08:42while others try to imply that your actual shipment
08:45will totally be trackable with the number you're buying.
08:47But in both cases, that is obviously complete bull.
08:51These services are all about tricking marketplaces.
08:55But the thing is,
08:56solving this is not as simple as you'd think.
08:59Because the marketplace isn't the shipper or the receiver,
09:03even if they had someone on staff
09:05whose job it was to check that everything lines up,
09:08the couriers wouldn't be at liberty
09:10to share any information
09:12about a shipment that doesn't involve them.
09:15And let's be real,
09:17even if the marketplace did notice the tracking was sus,
09:20what are they gonna do?
09:21They're gonna email the seller
09:23and then wait for a response.
09:25A response that will almost certainly be,
09:26oh, sorry about that, that was a mistake.
09:29Let me get back to you with the right number.
09:31Well, that's gonna buy discount Joe
09:32at least a couple more days
09:34to scooter up to your driveway
09:35with that e-girl keyboard that you so desperately need.
09:38At which point,
09:39everyone loses interest in the investigation.
09:42But where are these fake real tracking numbers coming from?
09:47Did these guys hire a guy on Fiverr
09:48to whip up some of those bots we talked about?
09:51Well, maybe.
09:52But we also came across another possibility
09:55while digging through eBay forum threads.
09:57Have you ever used one of those third-party tracking apps
10:00or websites to track your shipments?
10:02You know the kind.
10:02They promise to track any parcel from any courier
10:05no matter how obscure,
10:06which saves you the arduous work
10:08of typing in multiple three-letter domain names.
10:10Well, many of these sites are in countries with,
10:13let's call them loose data protections.
10:16And if you take the time to peruse their terms
10:18and privacy policies,
10:19you'll find that they generally
10:21do not consider tracking numbers
10:22to be personal or private information.
10:25So we've got these sites
10:27that are just slurping up active tracking numbers all day,
10:30every day, keeping track of where they're going and when.
10:33And we combine that with the market
10:36that happens to exist for valid tracking numbers and,
10:39well, let's just say there's some synergies to leverage,
10:43as they say.
10:44Now, to be clear, I don't have any hard evidence
10:46and I'm not saying that all of these tracking sites
10:49are selling data.
10:50I'm just saying that I would be shocked
10:51if at least some of them weren't.
10:54And if they are, well, up until this point,
10:57it isn't that bad of a scam.
11:00It is dishonest
11:01and it completely defeats the purpose of tracking.
11:04But most of the sellers
11:06that are buying these tracking numbers
11:08really are shipping your product
11:10and you really will get it eventually.
11:12They're just trying to jump through marketplace hoops
11:14and ship from the most advantageous sources, most of them.
11:18But eventually someone realized
11:20that they could use those numbers to gain their metrics.
11:23Let's say someone places an order for this here,
11:27this gaming mouse.
11:28After the order comes through though,
11:30their supplier goes out of stock and they can't get it.
11:34Well, marketplaces don't take kindly to sellers
11:37who take orders that they can't fulfill.
11:40So I'm in a pickle.
11:42That is until I get an idea, an awful idea,
11:45a wonderful, awful idea.
11:49I can avoid a strike on my account
11:51if I just buy one of those tracking numbers
11:53and then just not actually ship anything.
11:56Then when the tracking says delivered
11:58and the customer inevitably reaches out asking,
12:01hey, where's my order?
12:02I can say, oh, I'm so sorry.
12:05The courier must've messed up.
12:06Well, don't worry.
12:07I'm already processing a refund for you.
12:10At that point, as far as the marketplace is concerned,
12:13it's the courier that screwed up.
12:14I'm off the hook.
12:16Well, once that little technique
12:17spread around the dropshipping community,
12:19it was probably a matter of minutes
12:21before someone thought of using it
12:23to just straight up scam people,
12:25which brings us finally to my GPU here.
12:30Now I got lucky and they terminated this guy's account
12:33before he could pretend to ship my order.
12:35That made it much easier for me to file a dispute
12:38and get my money back.
12:39But it should be noted,
12:41I still had to manually file my dispute
12:44and you might not be so lucky.
12:47So then what can you do to avoid
12:49falling victim to this scam?
12:50Well, step one is to exercise restraint.
12:53Before you yell, shut up and take my money,
12:57take a breath, really look at the listing.
13:00Is the price too low, like unreasonably low?
13:03That's a red flag.
13:04Look at the seller.
13:05Do they have no or low feedback numbers?
13:08Red flag.
13:09What else are they selling?
13:10Nothing?
13:11Totally unrelated knickknacks?
13:13Why are you even still looking at this?
13:15That's all the red flags you need.
13:17You gotta ask yourself,
13:18what's more likely that someone totally ignorant
13:21got their hands on a new Inbox 4090,
13:24realized it was worth money,
13:25signed up for a brand new eBay account
13:27and then listed it for maybe half of what it's worth?
13:32Or that someone knows that a cheap 4090
13:35is gonna bring all the boys to the yard
13:37and that you should just yell,
13:39that's my purse and kick them in the plums.
13:42Bottom line, be careful out there.
13:44The 50 series launch means
13:46that there are going to be plenty
13:47of perfectly trustworthy bros out there
13:50that are looking to upgrade
13:51and move their older cards onto new owners.
13:54And I'm a huge advocate
13:55for buying secondhand hardware to save money
13:57and selling it so that somebody can be using it.
14:01Just take your time, find a good deal.
14:04Not a too good of a deal.
14:06And when you're done,
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14:56Pick up a pair for yourself
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15:00Go to Vessi.com slash LTT
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15:06If you guys enjoyed this video,
15:07maybe check out the one we did on fake SSDs
15:09being sold on Amazon.
15:11Why do people feel the need to scam each other?