How is it “A very dangerous situation”? What are the “Conventional testing methods” that you are referring to?
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The GFCI wouldn’t work if it were not grounded. All 120V receptacle outlets are grounded.
The plug in three light tester won’t trip it but the gfci should still trip in the event of a fault. A gfci outlet does not need a ground to function.
No equipment ground (EGC) and “not grounded” are two different things, but home inspectors and even electricians often use them interchangeably.
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Untrue. A gfi will work as designed and still provide protection even if not grounded.
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Correct NEC 406.4(D)(2)(b)/(c), which govern the use of GFCIs as retrofits when no equipment grounding conductor is present, requires labels. 110.3(B) covers the topic. But neither makes you use the crappy paper labels that come with every GFCI device.
That is not true (and I inspect in Knob & Tube prevalent areas, where it is even less true).
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The Eaton label is on the side… take a photo of that to know what the device is supposed to do.
Ya’ll understand George is baiting you, right?
Words matter!!
That is a poor graphic. Why can’t the creators of these things us the correct terminology? What is the “grounding wire” showing us?
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The one that’s yellow … 
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It’s COLD!
or
Maybe there is water running along it!
or
It’s vibrating!
I dunno. 
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Whatever they are trying to say is wrong since a hot to a ground rod will not trip the breaker and current does not want to go to ground, and they don’t know the purpose of a grounding electrode.
If they don’t have a test button I use the outlet tester… however, lately i noticed that I have to really push the test button test on the outlet tester to get it to trip… Make sure your tester is good and its not going out.
If you don’t have a ground connection, you also are not going to have 120V. The secondary of the supply transformer isn’t grounded only at the house. It is grounded at multiple locations. The odds of there being a neutral that is not connected to ground are astronomically high. Therefore, the GFCI cannot work.
I agree, if you had a receptacle fed with knob and tube or old 2-wire NM cable “without ground” there would be no EGC present at the receptacle but a GFCI device would still provide personnel protection.
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@gwells a grounded conductor is different than a grounding conductor.
And THAT was the only point being made with the above graphic… and my comment that “Words Matter”!!
Note… all the jibber-jabber about the funny looking ‘grounding wire’ was irrelevant, and likely some sort of “highlighting effect” for the sake of the conversation that it was pulled from!
@jjonas I interpreted that as showing current going to a ground rod during a fault. It would go on the grounding conductor back to the service, not earth.
Seems to me that whomever drew graphic their intent was showing exactly what you’ve described the fault current going into the earth and not returning through the main bonding jumper to the neutral which is actually what would happen.