This Essential Browser Extension Hides All The Knockoff Brands On Amazon

It doesn't take long shopping around the internet to find products from rather questionable sellers. If you've ever searched on Amazon, you've likely seen at least one product from a company with a gibberish name in all caps. Though these brands may be useful for picking up some cool mini gadgets for fun, searching for a product you need to be reliable only to be met with white-label items of dubious quality gets annoying fast. Fortunately, a new browser extension is aiming to eliminate the clutter.

Known simply as Knockoff — Amazon Brand Filter, this browser extension eliminates the "pseudo-brands" that can clog a user's Amazon search results, leaving only products "with a reputation to lose." Users can adjust the filter to suit their needs, and the extension also determines which brands should get the boot based on several factors. Along with being a free extension, some nice benefits of Knockoff are that users don't need to create an additional account, and the entire system runs locally through a browser.

Don't get us wrong, there's plenty of top-rated Amazon gadgets worth your money, but those tired of seeing products from companies with a name that seems to be a random string of capitalized letters will likely get some solid use out of this extension. As a bonus, the Knockoff extension eliminates paid sponsored listings and promises never to track your data. 

Available for both Google Chrome and Firefox, Knockoff is a fair source (FSL) web extension that works with any Amazon marketplace worldwide. Aiming to filter out the nameless junk from search queries, Knockoff checks brands against a list of 5,000 approved names and relies on a set of linguistic rules to determine whether a company is up to snuff. This includes checking for names in all caps, missing vowels, and even names that can't be pronounced.

Users can filter listings so that suspicious products stay hidden (revealed with a simple click), remain faded until hovered over, or simply display a warning chip so users know a brand may be bunk. There are also three different filter levels: relaxed, which focuses on "the notorious offenders"; standard, which includes unbranded listings and suspected brands; and strict, which only allows approved brands. The extension also updates daily via an open network request (the only one it makes) to refresh the list of suspects.

Additionally, users can also choose to block or trust any brand straight from the results page. The team behind the extension has made their work available on GitHub for those who want to check their homework or even help contribute. Knockoff even promises that any and all fixes arrive to every user. Considering there are already products you may not want to buy from Amazon, those tired of endlessly scrolling through a minefield of junk products may finally find what they're actually looking for.