I own a significant amount of male (non-PD) ^[1] USB-A 2.0, Lightning, and (30-pin) Dock adapters, all of which adapt to female USB-C 2/3[.2]. I never considered these to be non-conformant. However, after purchasing:

1. a USB-C female to female “extender” that, in retrospect, was, which killed my Framework 16's motherboard

2. a female USB-C to male DC ^[2] barrel plug adapter that occasionally causes my CREATIVE T60 (speakers) to reboot

…I want to ensure that all of my hubs and adapters (being the implicit extenders that they are) are compliant, and want to know, regardless of whether they are compliant, why they are, or are not safe.

I rid myself of all explicit extenders, so although they're now inapplicable to me, I remain interested nonetheless. However, I retain all of my mere adapters. Some configurations, I am aware are unsafe:

1. USB-C to USB-C cables, if merely female at one end or two (which renders the devices extenders, which are impermissible, ^[3] and with any more ends, they become splitters, which themselves are impermissible) ^{[4] [5]} aren't compliant, or safe. ^{[6] [7]}

2. Passive USB-A (to USB-C) adapters aren't compliant or safe. ^[8]

3. USB-A to USB-A adapters aren't compliant, ^[9] and male to male adapters aren't safe. ^[10] Luckily, all of mine are USB-C at one end, but I don't know whether that renders them compliant. I hope so.

4. Those inherent splitters and extenders that register themselves as hubs appear to be compliant – they're certainly prevalent – and don't appear to be problematic until daisy-chained. ^[11] This is more problematic for USB 2.0 than 3.0, ^[12] although I don't know whether that caveat applies to USB-C, or solely its predecessors.

If any of those are incorrect, please state how. I hope so, but don't expect to be. If anything is absent, please elaborate. That I expect.

From my research, the way to ensure that one remains safe appears to be:

1. Don't purchase extenders (especially for USB-C);

2. Purchase all adapters with a cable, and ensure that they're male at both ends; and:

3. Ensure that all adapters are active

However, I expect that some of those suggestions are predicated on inaccuracies. I certainly hope so, lest I rid myself of all of my uncabled adapters.

Terminology ^[13]

Utilised	Alternative	Example [14]
Female	Receptacle
Male [15]	Plug

Placement

I posted to electrical. because meta.codidact.com/posts/294825/history#1 accurately advises that this community's participants should know better about this topic than the alternatives offered by Codidact.

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1. electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/592354/1 ↩︎

2. reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/mozxu2/comment/nldxux9 ↩︎

3. youtube.com/watch?v=Ltlj-OjOCkI ↩︎

4. reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/18rsfdw/comment/kf38ir7 ↩︎

5. youtube.com/watch?v=lvnoz5uaTwE ↩︎

6. reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/10xj74r/comment/m8l5tuq ↩︎

7. reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1i2vgh0/comment/m7hqwei ↩︎

8. reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/1cdbpvi/comment/l1azv9j ↩︎

9. superuser.com/revisions/1608506/1 ↩︎

10. electronics.stackexchange.com/revisions/444287/3 ↩︎

11. superuser.com/revisions/1331718/3 ↩︎

12. superuser.com/revisions/1671903/2 ↩︎

13. comments/thread/11189#comment-27704 ↩︎

14. comments/thread/8758#comment-22526 ↩︎

15. szapphone.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/usb-c-pinout-diagram.webp ^[16] ↩︎

16. meta.codidact.com/posts/294861 ↩︎