网络安全研究员安德烈娅·斯特罗帕说起他的经历:一个给iPhone充电的简单日常操作,差点危及生命——他从朋友那里借来的充电器发生了爆炸。后来他发现,这个充电器是通过Instagram上的一个非官方渠道购买的假冒苹果(Apple)产品。
斯特罗帕和网络安全及社交媒体研究公司“幽灵数据团队”(Ghost Data Team)的同事一同调查了这一事件,发现曾经出现这种情况的,远不止他一个人。非法工厂和批发供应商正在通过Facebook销售假冒的苹果配件,例如AirPods、闪电数据线、iPhone电池和USB电源适配器等。这些仿冒品和正品外观几乎一致,质量和安全标准要低得多,售价则为正品的十分之一左右。彭博新闻社(Bloomberg News)审查了幽灵数据团队即将发布的一份报告后发现,这一非法业务已经发展为一项价值数百万美元的全球业务,欧洲和美国是他们的主要客源地。
研究人员称:“在解决平台上长期存在的假冒伪劣产品方面,Instagram的行动阻碍重重,拖拉迟缓,这是我们的研究想要揭露的东西。同时,我们也想强调,这类非法业务对苹果公司和消费者带来了诸多威胁。”他们指出,由于“未能对使用其平台的美国企业和全球公民进行充分的保护”,Facebook公司“有罪”。
Facebook的一位发言人则表示,在Instagram上买卖假冒商品违反了公司的政策。
“我们在移除制度上投入了更多资源,让我们能够更快地采取行动。虽然任务很多,但我们目前可以保证在一天内(通常在几个小时内)回应假冒内容的报告。”这位发言人说道。
追逐假冒商品
27岁的斯特罗帕同时也是世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)的数据分析顾问,在鉴别奢侈品、美元假钞等互联网假冒商品方面经验丰富。彭博社在2014年报道了一项研究:斯特罗帕的团队揭露了为出售假冒商品而公开在Facebook上购买广告位的用户。
斯特罗帕对苹果产品的兴趣始于去年。当充电器爆炸事件发生时,他正在意大利卡普里岛度假。这个标记为“苹果原创产品”的充电器是斯特罗帕的朋友在Instagram上购买的,价格比正品19美元的价格低了约25%。小型爆炸发生后,朋友试图联系原来的卖家,但其已经消失不见。
从2月8日到3月8日,幽灵数据团队在Instagram上对163家假冒苹果配件批发商家进行了监控。他们发现,最抢手的苹果产品是AirPods Pro,比起正品的249美元,其售价仅为25美元;假冒苹果MagSafe充电器的售价则从正品的38美元“降至”5.50美元。研究涉及的Instagram账户去年共上传了5万个销售贴文,获得了大约60万个赞和评论。
研究发现,与大部分假冒奢侈品依赖微信支付、Paypal支付不同,假冒苹果产品首选使用银行电汇和信用卡进行交易。幽灵数据团队的报告展示了伪造商品的卖家贴出的账单,其中一名卖家的汇丰银行(HSBC)个人银行账户单日在线销售收入达到了14万美元。
“我们有一个专门的专家团队,不断和世界各地的执法部门、商家、社交媒体平台和电商网站合作,力图把假冒产品从市场中驱逐出去。”苹果的一名发言人在电子邮件中表示,“去年,我们试图在Facebook和Instagram等线上市场中删除超过100万个假冒苹果产品。”
公司利益冲突
过去几年以来,即时通讯应用市场竞争日益激烈,Facebook和苹果逐渐成为市场中的对手。Facebook拥有三个通讯产品:WhatsApp、Messenger和Instagram。各自的用户数均超过10亿,共同与苹果的iMessage展开竞争。
此外,两家公司还在苹果的iPhone软件引入新隐私政策的计划上意见相左。Facebook称,这些措施对使用其社交网络定向广告服务的数以百万计的小企业不利。
同时,Facebook也在专注于苹果领域内的产品,比如虚拟和增强现实头盔。Facebook的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格曾经于1月告诉分析师:“我们越来越把苹果视为我们最大的竞争对手之一。”
而打击Instagram上假冒商品的战斗,则是硅谷大厂之间的另一个战场。
幽灵数据团队的研究人员指出,过去几年,美国政府和欧盟的研究表明,通过互联网销售假冒商品的情况越来越普遍。团队表示,他们关注的不是此类产品的经销商,而是提供假冒伪劣产品的制造商和批发商。
“部分个人和团体通过美国的社交网络非法牟利,牺牲了美国巨头的利益,而他们自己国家却不受波及——这真的很讽刺。”研究人员说。(财富中文网)
编译:杨二一
网络安全研究员安德烈娅·斯特罗帕说起他的经历:一个给iPhone充电的简单日常操作,差点危及生命——他从朋友那里借来的充电器发生了爆炸。后来他发现,这个充电器是通过Instagram上的一个非官方渠道购买的假冒苹果(Apple)产品。
斯特罗帕和网络安全及社交媒体研究公司“幽灵数据团队”(Ghost Data Team)的同事一同调查了这一事件,发现曾经出现这种情况的,远不止他一个人。非法工厂和批发供应商正在通过Facebook销售假冒的苹果配件,例如AirPods、闪电数据线、iPhone电池和USB电源适配器等。这些仿冒品和正品外观几乎一致,质量和安全标准要低得多,售价则为正品的十分之一左右。彭博新闻社(Bloomberg News)审查了幽灵数据团队即将发布的一份报告后发现,这一非法业务已经发展为一项价值数百万美元的全球业务,欧洲和美国是他们的主要客源地。
研究人员称:“在解决平台上长期存在的假冒伪劣产品方面,Instagram的行动阻碍重重,拖拉迟缓,这是我们的研究想要揭露的东西。同时,我们也想强调,这类非法业务对苹果公司和消费者带来了诸多威胁。”他们指出,由于“未能对使用其平台的美国企业和全球公民进行充分的保护”,Facebook公司“有罪”。
Facebook的一位发言人则表示,在Instagram上买卖假冒商品违反了公司的政策。
“我们在移除制度上投入了更多资源,让我们能够更快地采取行动。虽然任务很多,但我们目前可以保证在一天内(通常在几个小时内)回应假冒内容的报告。”这位发言人说道。
追逐假冒商品
27岁的斯特罗帕同时也是世界经济论坛(World Economic Forum)的数据分析顾问,在鉴别奢侈品、美元假钞等互联网假冒商品方面经验丰富。彭博社在2014年报道了一项研究:斯特罗帕的团队揭露了为出售假冒商品而公开在Facebook上购买广告位的用户。
斯特罗帕对苹果产品的兴趣始于去年。当充电器爆炸事件发生时,他正在意大利卡普里岛度假。这个标记为“苹果原创产品”的充电器是斯特罗帕的朋友在Instagram上购买的,价格比正品19美元的价格低了约25%。小型爆炸发生后,朋友试图联系原来的卖家,但其已经消失不见。
从2月8日到3月8日,幽灵数据团队在Instagram上对163家假冒苹果配件批发商家进行了监控。他们发现,最抢手的苹果产品是AirPods Pro,比起正品的249美元,其售价仅为25美元;假冒苹果MagSafe充电器的售价则从正品的38美元“降至”5.50美元。研究涉及的Instagram账户去年共上传了5万个销售贴文,获得了大约60万个赞和评论。
研究发现,与大部分假冒奢侈品依赖微信支付、Paypal支付不同,假冒苹果产品首选使用银行电汇和信用卡进行交易。幽灵数据团队的报告展示了伪造商品的卖家贴出的账单,其中一名卖家的汇丰银行(HSBC)个人银行账户单日在线销售收入达到了14万美元。
“我们有一个专门的专家团队,不断和世界各地的执法部门、商家、社交媒体平台和电商网站合作,力图把假冒产品从市场中驱逐出去。”苹果的一名发言人在电子邮件中表示,“去年,我们试图在Facebook和Instagram等线上市场中删除超过100万个假冒苹果产品。”
公司利益冲突
过去几年以来,即时通讯应用市场竞争日益激烈,Facebook和苹果逐渐成为市场中的对手。Facebook拥有三个通讯产品:WhatsApp、Messenger和Instagram。各自的用户数均超过10亿,共同与苹果的iMessage展开竞争。
此外,两家公司还在苹果的iPhone软件引入新隐私政策的计划上意见相左。Facebook称,这些措施对使用其社交网络定向广告服务的数以百万计的小企业不利。
同时,Facebook也在专注于苹果领域内的产品,比如虚拟和增强现实头盔。Facebook的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格曾经于1月告诉分析师:“我们越来越把苹果视为我们最大的竞争对手之一。”
而打击Instagram上假冒商品的战斗,则是硅谷大厂之间的另一个战场。
幽灵数据团队的研究人员指出,过去几年,美国政府和欧盟的研究表明,通过互联网销售假冒商品的情况越来越普遍。团队表示,他们关注的不是此类产品的经销商,而是提供假冒伪劣产品的制造商和批发商。
“部分个人和团体通过美国的社交网络非法牟利,牺牲了美国巨头的利益,而他们自己国家却不受波及——这真的很讽刺。”研究人员说。(财富中文网)
编译:杨二一
A simple, daily gesture like charging an iPhone turned into a life-threatening task for Andrea Stroppa, a cybersecurity researcher. The charger that exploded after he borrowed it from a friend, Stroppa discovered, was a counterfeit Apple product bought through an unofficial channel on Instagram.
Stroppa and his colleagues at Ghost Data Team, a cybersecurity, social-media reasearch firm, looked into the incident and found he was far from alone. The illicit factories and wholesale vendors are using the Facebook app to sell fake Apple accessories such as AirPods, lightning cables, iPhone batteries and USB power adapters. The knockoffs, identical except for their quality and security standards, are sold at discounted prices of as much as 10 times. The operation has become a multimillion-dollar global business with Europe and the U.S. as top customer destinations, according to a soon-to-be released report from Ghost Data Team reviewed by Bloomberg News.
“Our study aims at exposing Instagram’s difficulties, or unwillingness, to properly address its long-standing counterfeit market and also to highlight the many dangers of such illicit business for Apple and consumers alike,” the researchers said. Facebook is “guilty of failing to adequately invest and protect American businesses and citizens around the world who use its platform.”
A Facebook spokesperson said buying and selling counterfeit goods on Instagram violates the company’s policies.
“We have devoted more resources to our global notice-and-takedown program, which has made us quicker in taking action,” the spokesperson said. “While there’s always more work to do, we now regularly respond to reports of counterfeit content within one day, and often within a matter of hours.”
Chasing counterfeit goods
Stroppa, 27, who is also a data analyst consultant for the World Economic Forum, is a veteran in putting under scrutiny online counterfeit goods from luxury to fake U.S. dollar banknotes. Bloomberg reported in 2014 on a study in which his team exposed users who openly bought advertising space on Facebook in order to sell their counterfeit merchandise.
His interest in the Apple product situation began last year when the charger exploded while Stroppa was on vacation at Capri, Italy. The researcher’s friend purchased what was billed as an “original Apple product” on Instagram for about 25% less than the $19 price for a genuine one. After the small explosion, the friend tried to contact the original online seller, but he had vanished.
The Ghost Data team monitored from Feb. 8 to March 8 about 163 wholesale sellers of counterfeit Apple accessories on Instagram. The most wanted Apple gadgets were AirPods Pro, sold for $25 instead of $249 as well as Apple’s MagSafe Charger at $5.50 instead of $38. The Instagram accounts in the study uploaded 50,000 sales posts in the last year, which garnered about 600,000 likes and comments.
Unlike the market for counterfeit luxury items, which is mostly based on WeChat Pay and Paypal transactions, the preferred payment systems for the fake Apple products were bank wire transfers and credit cards, the study found. The report includes bills posted by vendors of the counterfeit merchandise, including one seller who grossed $140,000 in a single day of online sales through his HSBC personal banking account, Ghost Data reports.
“We have a dedicated team of experts constantly working with law enforcement, merchants, social media companies and e-commerce sites around the world to remove counterfeit products from the market,” an Apple spokesman said in an email. “In the last year we have sought the removal of over 1 million listings for counterfeit and fake Apple products from online marketplaces, including Facebook and Instagram.”
Companies clash
During last few years, Facebook and Apple found themselves rivals as competition on messaging has heated up. Facebook owns three messaging products with more than 1 billion users each -- WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram -- that compete with Apple’s iMessage.
The companies also have exchanged criticism over Apple’s plan to introduce new privacy measures to its iPhone software, which Facebook has labeled as bad for the millions of small businesses that use the social network’s targeted advertising services.
And Facebook is focusing on products that are also on Apple’s road map, such as virtual and augmented reality headsets. “We increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts in January.
The fight against counterfeit goods sold on Instagram could be another battle-ground between the Silicon Valley powers.
The Ghost Data researchers pointed to studies the past few years by the U.S. government and the E.U. suggesting the growing prevalence of counterfeit merchandise sold over the internet. Rather than looking at the online resellers of such products, the Ghost Data team looked at the manufacturers and wholesalers providing the supply of knockoffs.
“It seems also quite ironic that individuals and organizations are using a U.S.-based social media network, blocked in their own country for security reasons, exactly to do business particularly at the expense of a major U.S. company,” researchers said.