Ever find an online deal on your favorite Benefit, Nars, or MAC products and think it might be too good to be true?
Like your favorite Orgasm blush for a fraction of the price?
Then it's probably, most definitely, a fake.
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Most luxury cosmetic and skin care brands rarely — if ever — offer their products at deep discounts. So if you're seeing products available for major sale from a store you've never heard of, or have found a lot of supercheap stuff on eBay, chances are they're not actually the real deal.
Fakes are BIG BUSINESS: In the UK alone, people spent more than $141 million last year on counterfeit cosmetics, most of which were purchased online.
Ognen Teofilovski / Reuters
This is a picture of counterfeit cosmetics being destroyed at a city dump near Skopje, Macedonia, after customs officials confiscated them in 2007.
So why should you care? Well...it turns out that counterfeit cosmetics are often jam-packed with really nasty stuff.
A report from the City of London Police found that counterfeit cosmetics contained everything from arsenic and mercury to lead, poison, and rat droppings.
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This isn't the first report of its kind: The FBI released similar findings in 2014.
What's more, lab tests found that "counterfeit perfume often contains poisonous chemicals including cyanide and even human urine."
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BTW, there's no such thing as a NAKED 4 palette.
And BONUS! Because these products are made in unregulated, unclean factories, they're often laced with rat droppings.
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Yes, RAT POOP.
Remember, you're putting this stuff on your face.
Now go forth and buy poop-free makeup!
