Let’s say that you’ve found a great deal on a brand-name accessory for your camera on eBay, on the Amazon marketplace, or even at an offline store. The deal seems too great. Suspiciously great. What’s the catch? Canon wants consumers to know that you should watch out for electronics that claim to be genuine Canon accessories.

Of course, Canon does have a vested interest in making sure that customers buy genuine Canon-brand accessories and not knockoffs. It certainly hurts their sales, but there’s another problem: danger. For example, battery explosions. Apart from the effect on their sales, Canon is concerned for their customers’ safety and the reputation of products with the Canon name.

Power accessories are the most counterfeited Canon items, and this is leading to problems for their customers, but in terms of product quality and safety.

A rep for the company tells Consumerist that safety-related events are happening “more than we’d like.”

A Canon representative told Consumerist’s reporter on the ground at CES that when you open up a new Canon accessory, things to watch out for include blurry gray printing and missing punctuation marks.

You can play the “spot the fake” game yourself if that kind of thing sounds fun to you.

The differences are easy to spot when you have real and fake items side by side, and even easier when there’s a red light highlighting which ones are fake, as you can see in the photo at left.

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