Before you read a word of a listing, look at the photos. A counterfeit seller's photos tell the story faster than the description, the price, or the reviews, because photos are the hardest thing to fake well and the easiest thing to steal badly. The listing either shows the real product, photographed by someone who owns it, or it shows a collage of stolen images, stock photos, and mismatched backgrounds that no genuine seller would publish.
The check takes thirty seconds and no tools. Open the listing, look at the first three photos, and ask whether they could have been taken in the same room on the same day. If the answer is no, the listing is not selling what it shows.
The most common counterfeit photo is the brand's own photo, downloaded from the official store. It looks professional because it is professional. The tell is the mismatch: the official photo shows the product on a white background with studio lighting, and the next photo in the same listing shows a different product on a bedroom floor. A genuine seller photographs the item they own, in one place, with one camera. A counterfeit seller assembles a listing from images found online, and the seams show.
Reverse image search is the confirmation. Drag the listing's first photo into a search engine's image search and see where else it appears. If the same photo appears on the brand's official site, on five other marketplace listings, and on a stock photo site, the seller did not take it. A genuine seller's photos appear in one place: their listing.
Open the seller's other listings. A genuine seller has a coherent catalogue: similar products, similar photography, similar backgrounds, a consistent style. A counterfeit seller has a catalogue that looks like a warehouse clearance: 400 listings across unrelated categories, phone cases next to handbags next to supplements, each with photos in a different style. The catalogue is the seller's fingerprint, and a counterfeit operation cannot fake coherence across 400 listings.
Check the photo count and the photo quality together. A genuine listing for a used or new item has several photos of the actual item, including flaws, angles, and details. A counterfeit listing has one or two polished photos, often the same photo repeated, and no photo of the item's details: no zipper, no stitching, no label, no serial number. The absence of detail photos is the absence of the item itself.
Look at the background, not the product. A genuine seller's photos share a background: the same table, the same wall, the same lighting. A counterfeit listing's photos have different backgrounds because they came from different sources: one studio shot, one lifestyle shot from a blog, one photo with a watermark cropped out at the edge. The crop mark is a tell by itself: a photo with a corner cut off, a logo half visible at the edge, or an aspect ratio that does not match the other photos means the image was taken from somewhere else and trimmed to fit.
And check the shadows and reflections. A studio photo has soft, even lighting. A phone photo has hard shadows. A listing that mixes both is not a seller with two cameras. It is a seller with no camera at all, and the product in the photos is not the product that will arrive, if anything arrives.
Keep reading: Want a Refund for a Fake? The Evidence Pack Decides It., An Authorised Seller List Only Works If Someone Maintains It, and The Price Is the First Lie: Checks to Run When a Deal Looks Too Good cover the nearby cases in this series.
Reverse image search the first photo. If the same image appears on the brand's official site and on several other marketplace listings, the seller did not take it. Genuine seller photos appear in one place.
Hundreds of listings across unrelated categories, each with photos in a different style. A genuine seller has a coherent catalogue: similar products, similar photography, similar backgrounds.
Because the seller does not own the item. A genuine listing has several photos of the actual item, including flaws and details. A counterfeit listing has one or two polished photos, often the same one repeated, and no detail shots.
Do not buy. Report the listing through the platform's IP reporting tool, noting the stolen photos specifically, and keep screenshots. Copied photos are a copyright infringement and the fastest route to removal.