[AjithAntony]

E-cigarette products are rife with counterfeits and often use the scratchpad-code. It's a cat-and-mouse game still. They used to just spam one code on all the boxes so you could easily see messages like "this code has been checked 300 times" but later there were more codes and you would see they were only checked <10 times. Given that many consumers aren't even checking the codes, they probably get away with a lot.

[snaky]

That's all about reputation. Codes and other authenticity means just help to build - or break - the seller reputation.

By the way, for example, you know that e-cig products marked 'authentic' on e.g. Fasttech are really authentic, because (tens of?) thousands of people bought there, and checked the codes, and if that wouldn't stay true, all the people at all the related forums know that. I find it kind of funny when Chinese shop from Guangdong happened to build better reputation than the biggest American retail corporation.