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Re:Should you fear your USB cable? by xorcist on Monday February 29, 2016 @09:21PM (#11200383)
Don't buy cheap crap off ebay or amazon and plug into your laptop if you care about it. It was always so for chargers, now it's cables as well.

(I once bought a noname car charger, "it's for 12V so how bad can it be?". Turns out "very" is the answer as that phone never took charge again.)

Re:Should you fear your USB cable? by nommm-nommm on Monday February 29, 2016 @10:08PM (#11200544)
Don't buy cables or chargers off Amazon or eBay at all, regardless of price. Unless they are shipped and sold by Amazon - not a third party seller. There is more fakes on those two sites than the real deal.
Re:Should you fear your USB cable? by kbart on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @07:45AM (#11202214)
I always warn the ones I care about the same thing. The worst thing about fake/cheap electronics is not that they don't simply work, but that they might work 99 times out of 100, but the 100th time burn your house down due to failed/non existent surge protection or whatnot. It's easy and cheap to convert AC/DC to nominal rates, but protection from burning down is the hard and expensive part.
Re:Should you fear your USB cable? by bradley_long on Tuesday March 01, 2016 @05:31AM (#11201892)
I bought some from Taobao. Luckily, my devices are still okay.