Potentially Deadly Bomb Ingredients Are “Frequently Bought Together” on Amazon

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Amazon may be inadvertently recommending bomb ingredients: Channel 4 News says that the site’s algorithms guide users to the necessary chemical combinations for producing explosives and incendiary devices. Ingredients which are innocent on their own are suggested for purchase together as “frequently bought together” products, as it does with all other goods.

Ingredients for black powder and thermite are grouped together under a “frequently bought together” section on listings for specific chemicals. Steel ball bearings often used as shrapnel in explosive devices, ignition systems and remote detonators are also readily available; some promoted by the website on the same page as these chemicals as products that “customers who bought this item also bought...”
 
I guess this is one of those edge cases no one thought of during testing.
 
"Well, Agent Donnelly, the small steel balls are for my ... uhm ... er ... pachinko machine! and the gunpowder for ... wahhh ... reloading ... yes! that's it. .... oh, the short black iron pipes and caps? ... you see .... I uhhhh ... do a lot of ill-advised plumbing projects ... and I need the caps for when I pipe myself into a corner accidentally."
 
Purchasing these items is not illegal per se, it's building bombs thats the problem. Why should Amazon nanny it's users who may wish to buy items related to the things they are already buying legally? Guns are legal, black powder is legal, get over it. Hell you can buy cyanide on Amazon.
 
JosiahBradley said:
Purchasing these items is not illegal per se, it's building bombs thats the problem. Why should Amazon nanny it's users who may wish to buy items related to the things they are already buying legally? Guns are legal, black powder is legal, get over it. Hell you can buy cyanide on Amazon.
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Well the article is the UK, so their laws differ.

In the US, you can have up to 50lbs of the stuff and mix it up for your own use, you are jsut supposed to have a strorage magazine for it and can't sell it.
 
shad0w4life said:
Or they report people that buy these combos so they can be monitored :ninja:
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You could report half the population then. Its standard everyday usage items.

And every farmer pretty much sits on a mega bomb in their barn or machine shed.
 
Shintai said:
You could report half the population then. Its standard everyday usage items.

And every farmer pretty much sits on a mega bomb in their barn or machine shed.
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Pretty sure if it's being delivered to an apartment in the city, it's much more suspicious than delivered to a business address in the country titled "Farmer Joe's Corn Shack."
 
LOL, saw it's dealing with the UK, no wonder, those poor people.

Anything can be used as shrapnel, so it's a bit of a stretch to demonize steel ball bearings. They refuse to list the chemicals they found that make all of this, and considering how informed most news/reporters are on guns, I am going to go on a stretch they have no idea what is needed or the quality for making any sort of high grade black powder, no less some real explosives. I see a screenshot of charcoal and steel ball bearings shown, which is some cheap bulk charcoal, not airfloat like you need, but hey, lets ban wood and fire since I can use that with my ball mill to make airfloat. :confused:

I knew hysteria in the UK was getting bad, but good God.

None of the remote detonators are listed, which I am pretty sure they don't even know what that is, as they listed "battery connectors" and "push button switches" in that area, LOL! Shows they have no idea how even most HE is even ignited.
 
It's all used for legal fireworks.

Legal Firecrackers are limited to 0.05g of powder, aerial devices can be bigger. :)
 
thesmokingman said:
Maybe Home Depot should get into the mix too? Where they sell all that fertilizer...
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I used to make props for airsoft games, and one of my most popular ones was a Counter-Strike style prop. I walked out of Home Depot with 12" iron pipe, end caps, kerosene, fertilizer, and assorted nuts and bolts on a monthly basis. The kero was for the space heater in my garage and the fertilizer was to start seedlings in my house.
 
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I checked one time to see if batteries were in the "Frequently Bought Together" list for Fleshlights.
 
wizdum said:
I used to make props for airsoft games, and one of my most popular ones was a Counter-Strike style prop. I walked out of Home Depot with 12" iron pipe, end caps, kerosene, fertilizer, and assorted nuts and bolts on a monthly basis. The kero was for the space heater in my garage and the fertilizer was to start seedlings in my house.
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Except most fertilizer is useless to make anything explode with. Common media hysteria headline however. What people mean when talking about this is pure ammonium nitrate, mixed with fuel oils to make ANFO, which doesn't make a very good bomb because it requires HUGE amounts, the Oklahoma bombing used over 4,400lbs of it mixed with even more fuel. Then lets not even get into igniting it, people assume you just walk up with a match or a fuse and it goes "boom". When in the real world you need a booster or blasting cap, which is a HE that can actually set it off fast enough. What is funny is after this event, AN saw all sorts of attention, and even some limits on how much you could buy and people wanting it banned etc etc....All the while almost every place around still had ammonium perchlorate which is the better option for making a bomb and not a single word was talked about it.
 
Well ... If Channel 4 News spotted it, then certainly our government has. ... Oh, wait, nevermind.
 
So what? There are legit uses for everything on this list. There are also legit reasons to build explosive devices for personal use. Not seeing an issue here.

Honestly if I was going to do something I sure as hell wouldnt use a credit card to purchase all of the ingredients...
 
kju1 said:
So what? There are legit uses for everything on this list. There are also legit reasons to build explosive devices for personal use. Not seeing an issue here.

Honestly if I was going to do something I sure as hell wouldnt use a credit card to purchase all of the ingredients...
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There's gonna be a black van parked in front of your house for about 2 weeks.
 
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