This new browser extension blocks all fake and spammy brands on Amazon

If you’re an Amazon shopper, you’ve probably noticed fake brands flooding the site in recent years. The new extension from developer Josh Pigford promises to hide fake and cheap products and let you shop like a normal person again.

The extension called Knockoff is available for Firefox, chrome And all Chromium-based web browsers like Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Brave. Since Pigford launched the extension on Tuesday, it has gone viral, with tens of thousands of downloads. A few days before the start of this week. Pigford posted on X“Create a small Chrome extension that lets you obfuscate (or hide!) all mass-produced counterfeit brands on Amazon.” The post received 22 thousand likes.

It simply works. Once installed, any products from fake brands, dropshippers, or otherwise suspicious sellers are flagged and shaded in grey, highlighting the more popular brands you may already know. There’s also an option to automatically hide fake brands so you don’t have to see them at all.

In an interview With 404 mediaPigford says Knockoff builds on previous extensions that aim to do this, like AmazonBrandFilter and Amazon Brand Detector. The extension, which runs locally, does not require an account, does not send data to any company servers and does not cost anything. It is also open source, and you can find the source code On github.

So, how well does Knockoff do?

Anything sounds good on paper, but the proof is in the pudding. I took the Knockoff for a test drive to see how well it filtered mass-produced waste.

My trial was not very complicated. I searched a variety of products across several categories using Knockoff’s inventory settings to see how well the extension filtered out counterfeit brands without any additional tuning.

The short answer is that she did a very good job. While researching vacuum cleaners, I left most of the listings intact as they were from well-known brands including Shark, Bissell and Dyson. Only a few listings were greyed out, mostly because the brand name was not listed in the product description.

Solar lights fared much worse. Knockoff has blocked dozens of listings for lack of brand names, and has also blocked listings from Jkimk, Technet, Tonulax, and other unrecognized brands (most of them stylized in capital letters), while retaining listings for established brands, such as Brightown, Real company Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Phone cases are where things start to get more complicated. The extension has blocked brands like Supfine, Dumkery, Hiearcool and many others. However, it has also banned Torras, a well-known brand of holsters with stock at Best Buy, which keeps them Thousands of global patents for many of its products. It doesn’t sound any more real than Torras, but the company’s products are flagged because their name is stylized in capital letters, which the extension verifies.

Knockoff has listed some lesser-known but still legitimate earphone brands such as Tozo and Linsoul as real companies, while correctly flagging bogus hand tool brands including Wgge and Horusdy. Brands that the extension doesn’t recognize often appear featured, but on the product page, the extension flags them as suspected counterfeits or completely unknown.

It helps that Knockoff has a system for reporting brands that are incorrectly labeled as legitimate (or mislabeled as fake). If an extension flags a product as fake when it’s legitimate, you can tap the badge and “Report as real.” Likewise, if an extension flags a product as legitimate when it’s actually fake, you can click the badge and “Report as Spam” when you click a badge over a brand that the extension recognizes. You may have to turn on good brand badges in settings to do this.

There are some minor drawbacks to this approach. An example of this is the Spec Ops tool brand, which is Real brandbut Knockoff lists it as Unknown and only gives me the “Report as spam” option. According to the GitHub page, all reports are logged and processed manually, but it does not specify whether reports are logged based on which version of the report button users click.

Knockoff is a good start at filtering out junk mail

Overall, Knockoff is a useful extension in a digital market dominated by AI-generated assets and unverified third-party products.

When you shop, the biggest benefit is to avoid low-quality brands. Even if you’re not actively shopping for anything, it’s fun (and terrifying) to see how many gray product listings you can find in any given product category. We recommend running well-known brand badges, but otherwise the stock settings performed best.

Meanwhile, Knockoff shows you which brands are likely to be counterfeit on Amazon, but it doesn’t tell you which products are actually good or bad. Fake brands often come with fake or bot-written reviews more often than legitimate brands.

However, it all depends on what you are shopping for. If all you need is a set of zip ties to manage light cables or tie a tomato plant to a garden trellis, those sold by dropshipping companies will work well and will save you a few bucks.

And while Knockoff certainly makes it easier to shop for quality items, the extension still needs some human fine-tuning and analysis.

Avoid counterfeit brands without extension

An eagle-eyed shopper can spot a fake brand from a mile away if he knows where and how to look at product listings.

The first step, according to Russell Holley, CNET’s director of commerce content, is to research the brand beyond Amazon.com. “If it looks like a string of random letters and the brand name is not sold anywhere else, there is a good chance the seller is not the manufacturer,” Holley said.

Holly also says that more attention should be paid to negative reviews, since brands often only fake positive reviews. Negative reviews can be a better indicator of quality issues that may help explain why a product is cheaper than others in the same category.

Likewise, you can also look for brand product support. If the only way to report an issue is directly to Amazon, Holly says you’re probably dealing with a dropshipper that doesn’t offer product support if something breaks.

Another way to spot a fake brand is to find the same product being sold under multiple brands. Case in point Broserengy alarmbluetooth speaker, phone charger set. It is almost identical to This product From Fansbe, including RGB lights on the bottom, the placement (and labeling) of the buttons and an auxiliary USB port on the back for charging an accessory. These are two completely different versions of the same product.