Pharma spam overview
From Spamwiki
Contents |
[edit] Introduction
A large percentage of spam arriving in inboxes belongs to the pharma spam categories. Taking advantage of the fact that there are a number of legitimate internet pharmacies that offer discount prices, they attempt to scam people who wish to avoid some of the legal restrictions on drug purchases for a number of reasons:
- Some people may wish to find a lower cost source of medications. Most people in the US are aware that many expensive medications can be obtained in Canada at a lower cost, and they assume anything called "Canadian" is a bargain.
- Some people are unable to obtain a prescription for a maintenance drug because they are not keeping physician appointments or undergoing necessary monitoring/testing.
- Some people want drugs that physicians are unwilling to prescribe for them, such as narcotics or unnecessary antibiotics.
[edit] Generic vs. Brand
"Generic" refers to a drug sold by the name of its active ingredient(s). For instant, "Tagamet" is a brand name for an ulcer drug. The actual drug is "cimetidine." While it was under patent, only the company that owned the patent could make the drug, and you could only buy Tagamet brand cimetidine. Since the patent has expired, you can buy generic cimetidine from many different manufacturers. While a drug is under patent there is no competition to lower the price and there is a lot of money spent on marketing. Once multiple manufacturers are competing, the price comes down, especially as the generic manufacturers are not spending money advertising.
Most of the scam pharmacy sites claim to offer generic versions of drugs still under patent protection. During the duration of a patent, a product cannot be made or sold without authorization from the inventor. Therefore, any generic drugs sold during this period are by definition counterfeit. When law enforcement agencies order medications from illegal internet pharmacies, about half the time the pills contain no active drug. Many of the sites covered in this wiki take fraud to new lengths, and it's unlikely they ever deliver real medications...not much of a bargain at any price.
In the case of medications whose patents have expired, generic prices in the US are often as low or lower than legitimate Canadian pharmacies. The scam pharma sites may actually have dramatically higher prices, charging a high premium for providing those sugar pills without a physician prescription.
[edit] Selling Without Prescriptions
Whether a drug requires a prescription is determined by the laws of the country where it is purchased, and it often occurs that a drug that requires a prescription in one county will not require one in another. Some countries do not require prescriptions for any legal drugs.
There are several reasons why countries have laws requiring a prescription to purchase certain medications:
- The drug may be for a condition that may require training/special testing to diagnose or the disease may possibly be confused with other conditions
- The drug may require special monitoring to see if it is achieving the desired effect or to see if it is causing adverse effects
- There may be reasons certain people should not take a drug, and it may require special knowledge or testing to know if you are one of those people.
- The drug may be so new that it's important to keep records of who has taken it in case serious side effects are discovered after it comes to market
Some pharmacies claim that a physician associated with the website will review a questionnaire and provide a prescription for each order, and there are pharmacies that have actually done that. However it is not legal in the US, and no physician you'd ever want to visit would risk his license to do it. More often, there either is no prescription at all, or there are forged prescriptions produced with stolen physician license data. Again, most of the spamvertised brands featured on this wiki are so blatantly illegal that they will take your money no matter what you tell them on the questionnaire.
[edit] "Canadian" Pharmacies
As noted above, there can be significant price differences for brand name prescription drugs between the US and Canada. Since the US does not have a national healthcare system yet, many people simply can't afford all the medications they are supposed to be taking. They often consider purchasing them from Canada where there are government cost controls, and some US state governments have endorsed this practice in opposition to the US federal government position.
In that context, the scam pharmacies are falling all over themselves to claim to be "Canadian." Sometimes just reading the site will show that they aren't actually claiming to be located in Canada nor to be obtaining drugs from Canada. Other times they offer Canadian addresses or pharmacy licenses that have been shown to be completely fraudulent, as you will read in many of the articles here.
[edit] Fake Endorsements
Many scam sites have an impressive array of logos from certifying agencies. Some are imaginary agencies, but some are real organizations like the Better Business Bureau.
On any real site, those logos should link to the websites of the certifying agency. So if you click on a Better Business Bureau logo, it should take you to a page on the Better Business Bureau's website that confirms the endorsement. Scam pharmacies get around this several ways:
- creating a fake page on their own site instead that looks like it confirms the endorsement -- in that case, the address in the browser navigation window will show it hasn't actually taken you to the official site
- linking to a real page on the certifying agency website, but not a page that actually endorses their site.
- not having any clickable links at all
[edit] Itinerant Web Addresses
A spamvertised pharmacy can't use the same web address long before spam filters start blocking its emails. And many of those websites are shut down quickly for any number of illegal activities in addition to the spamming. So they typically will have hundreds or thousands of identical sites that have different domain names. All are registered with fraudulent information, since the spammers certainly aren't going to use their own names in conjunction with these illegal sites. And while there may be an overall sponsor for a given spamvertised brand, their spamming affiliates may have varying degrees of autonomy in operating these various domains. Needless to say, if you have any complaints after they take your money, good luck finding whom to contact.
