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How to Spot a Counterfeit Apple Lightning Cable or Apple Power Adapter


Apple recently filed a lawsuit against Mobile Star LLC for selling counterfeit power adapters and charging cables on Amazon, and claimed that around 90 percent of official chargers sold on Amazon are fake. That’s a huge margin. Here’s how to figure out if you got one of those.

First the stats, according to Patently Apple, Apple purchased a bunch of power adapters and cables from Amazon and ran a series of tests on them. Here’s what Patently Apple found:

Over the last nine months, Apple, as part of its ongoing brand protection efforts, has purchased well over 100 iPhone devices, Apple power products, and Lightning cables sold as genuine by sellers on Amazon.com and delivered through Amazon’s “Fulfillment by Amazon” program. Apple’s internal examination and testing for these products revealed almost 90% of these products are counterfeit. Apple is concerned that consumers are being deceived into purchasing counterfeit products on Amazon.com and elsewhere in the mistaken belief that they are purchasing genuine Apple products. In addition to Apple’s significant safety concerns for its consumers, these products, which are consistently poorly constructed, are unlikely to function as well as genuine Apple products. As a result, consumers will erroneously come to think that Apple’s products are of inferior quality and lose trust in the Apple brand, damaging the enormous goodwill associated with the Apple trademarks.

When it comes to electricity, you don’t want to mess around with fakes as they can either ruin your device, charge it slowly, or worst case scenario, start a fire.

In this particular case, the problem is that Mobile Star LLC was an official Amazon seller, which means when you look at the Amazon page, it looks like you’re buying it directly from Amazon, not some random third-party seller. For it’s part, Amazon removed Mobile Star’s selling privilege and according to MacRumors, stopped selling those specific counterfeits. Still, it’s possible you’ve ended up with one, either through Mobile Star or other sellers.

Even today, glancing at the first result when you search for “Apple Power Adapter” reveals plenty of claims of receiving counterfeits as recently as last week. We’ve seen how to spot older counterfeit chargers before, but the newer smaller adapter and lightning cables are a bit different.

For Lightning cables, the process is detailed enough that Apple has its own support page. First off, Apple recommends only using accessories that Apple has certified, which means it comes with the “Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad” logo on it. Otherwise, a third-party certified cable will have a MFi logo on the package.

If you have an official cable, it will read either: Designed by Apple in California, followed by either “Assembled in China,” “Assembled in Vietnam,” or “Indústria Brasileira” and then followed by a 12-digit serial number. If it’s missing any of this information, it’s counterfeit.

The hardware itself is also worth looking at. Apple’s support page shows a few ways to spot a counterfeit by looking at the Lightning cable end:

The USB end has a number of possible ways to spot a counterfeit as well. An official cable has gold-plated contacts, trapezoidal interlocks, and a smooth surface. Counterfeits tend to have right angle interlocks, silver-plated contacts, and a rough surface in general.

Power adapters are a little harder to spot. Above is what an official Type A adapter looks like, and aside from obvious differences in the case itself, you want to look for minor differences in the text itself, including typos. The most common is in the first line, “Designed by Apple in California.” Counterfeits will often read something like, “Designed by Abble in California,” or “Designed by China in California.” Otherwise, counterfeits are often just constructed poorly, where you can pull off the casing or rip out the prongs by hand.

Knockoffs are a bad idea just because they’re a safety hazards, and counterfeits are no different. If you think you have one, it’s best to get a replacement. Amazon’s return policy is generally pretty lenient if that’s where you purchased it from, though you might be better off just heading into an Apple Store for an official (or officially licensed) replacement.