Nearly 70 percent of people were deceived into buying a counterfeit product online at least once last year, according to research from Michigan State University. And buying knockoff versions of products can be dangerous. Kari Kammel, the director at the Center for Anti Counterfeiting and Product Protection at Michigan State University, shares tips for how to avoid counterfeit and unsafe products, especially online. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
Before I was the host of Life Kit, I was a financial reporter for the public radio show Marketplace.
And one time I went to Rhode island to interview a woman who owned a small company that makes bird feeders.
A customer had bought a hummingbird feeder from her brand on Amazon, or so they thought, because it was a fake.
A convincing one with her company's name and phone number on it.
But it didn't work.
The pieces didn't fit together.
That kept happening to this company, and it happens to all sorts of companies, large and small, that somewhere, someone decides to make a cheap, fake version of their product and sell it online.
That's what you call a counterfeit.
A counterfeit product is something that stems from what's called a trademark counterfeit.
Basically, the seller is trying to make money off of some other company's reputation.
The unauthorized use of the trademark is what makes it a counterfeit because it signals to the marketplace that that particular item is coming from the brand when it indeed is not.
That's Keri Kamel.
She's the director of the center for Anti Counterfeiting Product Protection at Michigan State University.
Counterfeits are often a waste of money because they fall apart quickly or they don't work.