Why you should be careful about where you get your makeup from.
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.
Most luxury cosmetic and skincare 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 super cheap 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.
This is a picture of counterfeit cosmetics being destroyed at a city dump near Skopje, Macedonia, after customs officials confiscated them in 2007.
Ognen Teofilovski / Reuters