Online stores sell USB-C cables that can damage your laptop.

Google engineer Benson Leung (Benson Leung) tests USB Type-C cables and publishes reports on Amazon . Now he posted photos of one blatant specimen that he caught.

Even a superficial inspection of the decoupling indicates a fault:
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1. The red wire is soldered to pin G, and black to V, which is wrong.
2. There are no SuperSpeed ​​wires on the back of the connector. There are only four wires. The cable is declared as USB 3.1 SuperSpeed, but there are no wires and TX / RX connectors.
3. In general, poor quality soldering.

Measurements with a multimeter revealed a few more problems.

1. A 10 kΩ resistor is installed instead of a 56 kΩ resistor.
2. The resistor is connected as a pull-down, not as a pull-up.

Benson Leung has explained before that a 10kΩ resistor can only be used in CC cables (Type-C on both sides). As a result, when you connect a device that can pull 3 amps, the result can be deplorable. The requirement to use a 56kΩ resistor in the specifications is set in order not to damage old equipment, including USB Type-A, which is connected on the other side of the cable if it is connected to the USB Type-C connector and pulls 3 amperes. This can damage the charger, computer or other equipment. The saddest thing is that the cable is able to work normally for a long time, without showing any damage, but when connected to certain equipment, it can simply burn.

And this is not just theoretical reasoning. On Amazon, you can find reviews of some customers who have damaged equipment (in this case , the Chromebook Pixel 2015 laptop and two USB PD Sniffer adapters while charging the laptop) because of the USB-C cable. Both USB Type-C ports failed on the laptop, and the Embedded Controller disappeared from the system, so the chromebook was loaded into Recovery Mode.

In order not to get into trouble, after buying a suspicious cable, it is advisable to check that it is the resistor installed at 56 kΩ, and not at 10 kΩ. As already mentioned , to do this, you need to load the laptop in debug mode (dev mode) and connect the adapter to some charger, which is not particularly a pity. Then run the command from the console:

ectool --name=cros_pd usbpdpower 0 

There is another option to check: in normal boot mode, go to chrome://system and in the dmesg section look for a line like this:

 [ 121.172637] PDLOG 2015/11/04 19:58:18.074 P1 SNK Charger Type-C 5000mV max 5000mV / 3000mA