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Sometimes even adaptors from well-known manufacturers, such as the Belkin F8E449ea shown left, are seriously unsafe and have to be withdrawn from the market.  Further details on the Belkin can be found here.

Another source of badly designed and unsafe adaptors is crowdfunding websites which seem to attract people who have no knowledge of basic safety, and the standards which adaptors must meet.

The illegal adaptor on the right is from a British company who attempted to raise funds on Kickstarter, see full story.

Here we take a closer look at the first type of adaptor shown above.  This example was provided with a soldering appliance bought on eBay.  The detachable power cord  (illegally) supplied was a US power cable, so instead of supplying the correct cable the eBay vendor included this adaptor.  Please note that the US cable is quite clearly marked with a 125V rating, so not only illegal but completely unsuitable for UK mains voltage!

Shutters and a fuse are required by UK law, but not present in this design.  Because the adaptor is designed to accept a variety of different flat pin and round pin plugs, the pin apertures are unreasonably large, the exposed contacts can be clearly seen.  Note that the line and power pins are too close to the periphery of the adaptor body,  less than half of the legal minimum.  Also note that the pins are not correctly aligned, and are significantly smaller than permitted, approximately 9% shorter than the minimum allowed, this can be seen in the picture comparing the adaptor pins with a genuine plug.   The earth pin is partially insulated, again that is not allowed and can result in there being no connection to earth.  The adaptor does not exhibit the required markings to indicate that it has been approved, it appears to bear a back-to-front “CE” mark, but the CE mark is not  permitted on a BS 1363 device label because BS 1363 is a National, not European, Standard.

SKROSS is the trademark of a Swiss company called WorldConnect AG who make a range of travel adaptors.  On their website the company claims that ”For all SKROSS products, the observance of internationally-relevant safety standards is at the foreground during the entire development and production process” and yet a search of the site reveals no reference to, let alone an awareness of the importance of, BS 1363 or BS 8546! 
As the PlugSafe “Size Matters” Fact Sheet explains, it is very important to only insert objects of the correct shape and dimensions into a BS 1363 socket to ensure that the socket is not damaged.  The ISOD (plastic earth pin) shown in the picture is clearly not the correct shape!
SKROSS make a range of adaptors, some are specified for three pin use and are equipped with metal earth pins, but the two pin types, such as the one illustrated here, are also designed to accept  three pin UK plugs.  There is nothing to stop the user inserting an earthed UK plug (or, indeed, some earthed European plugs) into the adaptor.  As the adaptor has no earth connection to the host socket this is a very dangerous situation and it is entirely irresponsible of the company.  The design is clearly not inherently safe, does not comply with British standards, and is therefore illegal to supply in the UK.