I bought a magnetic charging cable from Amazon a couple of weeks ago (single braided cable, but comes with magnetic attachments so it can be used for USB-C, microUSB, lightning etc).
There were maybe 50 brands to choose from at the time, all with Amazon Prime. All pretty similar, probably from 1 or 2 manufacturers, but being marketed under lots of different Chinese brand names.
So.. today I try to buy some more, and there’s only a tiny handful listed. Even when you click those, they all say ‘Currently Unavailable’. Seems very odd they’ve all disappeared, since ‘Amazon Prime’ meant Amazon warehouses would have been holding an inventory of all these different brands.
I know it’s possible to embed malware in a USB cable, and I’m starting to think Amazon have been alerted to this being deployed in the wild, and have pulled all of them as a precaution.
Anyone here who is in the cyber-security space, who might have some info about this?
4 comments
I’m seeing hundreds of options just now.
Amazon also remove brands which are found to be breaching their rules on reviews such as [aukey](https://lifehacker.com/what-the-hell-happened-to-aukeys-products-on-amazon-1846870233), it’s possible this is what has happened or the seller(s) have removed items on their own
> Anyone here who is in the cyber-security space, who might have some info about this?
No need to even go that far. China has still been doing full lockdowns because of Covid which has massively impacted manufacturing. Throw in the global shipping chaos that’s also helped to create and it’s just a case of can’t sell what isn’t getting delivered to you.
Many products with various names in Amazon are the same drop shipped product from China with flashy packaging.