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No prescription: Researchers live-chatted with a representative from rx-medical-center.com. A live-chat correspondent assured them that they did not need a prescription to order a muscle relaxant postmarked from India.
LegitScript/KnujOn
Bing, Google, and Yahoo all verify the legitimacy of online pharmacies by using PharmacyChecker, which covers overseas pharmacies in addition to US-based ones. For an online pharmacy to meet PharmacyChecker's standards, it must be licensed with a pharmacy board, require prescriptions based on face-to-face doctor-patient meetings, comply with patient-privacy laws, and have valid contact information and sufficient online encryption.
PharmacyChecker also covers Canadian pharmacies, because they undergo a regulation process as rigorous as the FDA's, according to Tod Cooperman, president of PharmacyChecker. "None of those 10 pharmacies [examined in the report] are approved members of the PharmacyChecker program," says Cooperman. He was unable to explain why ads for unverified pharmacies showed up on Bing.
"They shouldn't advertise any pharmaceuticals until they figure out ways to [regulate]," says Bruen. "They should require that anyone who uses specific drug names in their search criteria disclose their pharmacy license and brick-and-mortar location."
To sell ads, search engines typically run an auction for certain search keywords, with popular search terms, such as "Viagra," costing more. Every time a user clicks on a search ad, the seller pays the search engine a fee, ranging from a few cents to a few dollars, depending on the keyword. In this bidding system, Horton suggests that the abundance of illegal pharmacy ads may overwhelm legitimate ones. "If the drugs they're selling are counterfeit or knockoffs, they have lower costs than legitimate pharmacies," says Horton. "The rogue Internet pharmacies have more money to bid on advertising [and] drive up the auction rates, to the detriment of legitimate advertisers."
Bruen, who monitors large, organized spam networks, also found that many online pharmacies are tied to spam groups. By looking at domain registration records, they found that some pharmacies were located in Russia, India, or Panama, despite stating that they were based elsewhere.
E. J. Hilbert, a former FBI agent and the head of online security for Epic Advertising, says that search engines shouldn't allow advertisers to display one website address and then direct a user to a different one. "Why would you call it dailymedrx.com when it redirects to k2med.com, which is located in Russia?" he asks. Hilbert also suggests that search engines check the domain names of their advertisers to see where they are really based. "If an advertiser is bidding a lot higher for a keyword like "Viagra' than others, it may be a red flag that they are illegitimate, he adds.
"The online advertising market is a multibillion-dollar business," Hilbert says. "The profit model is in favor of 'run the ads and buyer beware,' versus being consumer conscious."
Last year, NABP, the American Pharmacists Association, and CAMA wrote to major search engines expressing concern about fraudulent pharmacies. "We never heard back from Google and Yahoo," says Foster. "We did eventually hear back from Microsoft [and] they indicated that they would look into the problem."
Horton and Bruen say that they plan to investigate additional search engines.
Updated 8/6/09: A Microsoft spokesperson said in response to the report, "We take these claims very seriously and are currently investigating this issue." Microsoft's advertiser's guidelines state that only pharmacies in the US and Canada can target the US market.
BuzzLogic hopes that monitoring online discussion will help advertisers target the right customers.
A new approach offers a more efficient way to design biological "circuits."
Ha! Thanks LegitScript. I'll check Bing later tonight.
I am looking to buy a prescription medicine but as I don't have health insurance, I am not going to argue with some doctor and then have to pay a $100-$150 to write a prescription for me.
So I will order what I need from an overseas supplier who doesn't require a U.S. prescription. I've done this numerous times before and have not had any problems in doing so.
Now, if we had universal health insurance for everyone, then I wouldn't have to go this route.
Why single out Bing in headline?
Since the investigators of this article believe that ALL the search engines suffer the same sort of dillema, why single out Bing as somehow being bad or inferior in your headline? Investigators state they are going to check the other search engines which didn't even respond to inquires from the Pharmacy Board folks, it seems this article is premature.
Re: Why single out Bing in headline?
The new research here is directly related to Bing, which is why they are mentioned in the title. In the story, I examined Google and Yahoo's policies,and Bing was used as an example, rather than singled out as inferior. There are no stats on Google or Yahoo yet. It will be interesting to see what the next report says.
I'm surprised at the "discovery" tone of this article. Doesn't almost everyone already know the internet is a jungle, full of scams, and that everything requiring authenticity needs vetting? The only antidote for this situation for the time being, in my opinion, is skepticism and good judgment.
A lot of people actually don't know anything about this, especially that some of these pharmaceutical distributors aren't regulated and that their websites can have viruses. This is a serious problem that the search engines should be held responsible for.
If these advertisers are in violation of the law with illegitimate ads, then it seems like the search engines could be charged with "Aiding and Abetting", "Fraud" and "Conspiracy" for starters. Let a consumer advocate group file a few law suits in this area and see what happens!
How utterly American
This article assumes that if it is illegal in the US of A, ipso facto it is illegal everywhere.
There are many drugs that require a prescription in the States that do not require one in other countries. Often those countries have a shorter patent period for drugs as well.
I notice that the article refers to the drugs as being "counterfeit", but does not state that counterfeit ones are either harmful or useless.
I am sorry, but this story, the report it is based on and the study the report comes from, smells like a bit of propaganda from the American Pharmaceutical Lobby.
Not that there is not a lot of junk out there, but this report is - seemingly - deliberately lumping legitimate businesses with dodgy ones.
Richard@Rivers
Counterfeit money is not harmful, either!
If you think that a counterfeiter of drugs is going to make their sham product even close to the specifications of the authentic, consider what stops them from adding a harmful or toxic ingredient.
The definition of "counterfeit" is key here. Sometimes it is used to describe drug products that violate patent.
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340 Comments
This is common
scams and business with poor practices or shoddy merchandise seem to be the big advertisers.
Discovery channel: auto warranty company has ads all the time but if you google their name plus 'complaints' you get the indication that they are a scam.
Segue to google: I would search for anti-virus and get scam antivirus products near the top of sponsored results.
huge percent of software on ebay was (not sure if still is) illegal copies.
download.com - if I search for popular antivirus program, sponsored results come up with very similar sounding doubtful program.
See recent article in foreignpolicy mag on the illegal pharmaceutical trade in india. you can order custom fakes with any percent of real ingredients. India fails to crack down on these, which would even help their own people by protecting from ineffective fakes with too low a percent of active ingredient or harmful additives.
and of course criminal then sell these worldwide.
'legitimate' business also advertise. Dell has customer service ratings in the toilet on resellerratings.com complete with stories about 'dell hell' phone tag. HP and others have bad ratings often also. While PO'd people tend to complain more it appears even large legitimate companies can treat customers very shabbily. I have an acer quad cpu PC that hard freezes every 10 minutes but only if you actually do something like browse or powerpoint. It does this even after being restored from protected partition yet acer is incapable with their tests of detecting the problem, and have sent it back 'fixed' 3 times to no avail.
I thing an extension of ratings of companies, perhaps something along the line of the article on this site on expert ratings modified for commercial companies? would help put the shoddy and illegal companies out of biz.
Wait, then who would pay for my late night discovery programs? :)
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