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Its worse than that. Don't buy a board from Ebay or Alibaba.

Its worse than that. Don't buy generic electrical goods w/USB from East Asia (they might be tainted by this, unbeknownst to you).

"Don't buy generic electrical goods from East Asia" is pretty good advice in general, given that some people have been literally electrocuted by faulty low-cost equipment sourced from the region.

“Only buy electronical goods from East Asia that passed VDE, TÜV Nord, GS and CE specifications and tests”.

(Interestingly, a lot of the US–produced products do not pass these tests either. The German standards for product quality are some of the highest existing and they have actually the ability to test all the imported stuff. Just don’t ever trust the TÜV Süd)

This might have just been rumor, but I've heard tell of devices with fake CE stickers.

It reminds me a bit of the great 'bad electrolytic capacitor' debacle that cost companies millions.

Except in this case, the quality of the fake is fine.

It's hard to know if that's true or not - as if the fakes caused a bunch of problems, they'd be complaining about FTDI rather than the fakes.

Nope. It has the wrong VID/PID programmed in to it.

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