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Spam Pharmacies Posting Ads on Yahoo, Bing

Internet security researchers, who earlier discovered same carelessness in policing online pharmacy ads on Bing, said that around 80% of web pharmacies advertising on Yahoo were spam providing prescription-only medicines without a proper prescription.

An Internet compliance company, KnujOn.com, and an online pharmacy verification service, LegitScript.com, said that they were able to purchase prescription tablets without furnishing real prescription from Yahoo pharmacy ads. In one of the case, the tablets were imported from India, which was forbidden by the US law.

Both the firms informed that the pharmacy verification service for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, PharmacyChecker.com, permitted an online pharmacy that sold drugs without a prescription.

According to the rules of Yahoo, Web pharmacy advertisers should be based in Canada and US. The report studied three Web pharmacies permitted to advertise their products had a Canadian pharmacy license. Moreover, in all the three cases, these pharmacies pointed that the medications were actually shipped from countries like India, Barbados, Singapore and not Canada.

In addition, one Web pharmacy advertiser, who had a Canadian Web pharmacy license, said that it could apply for prescriptions anywhere across the world except Canada as prescription drug import is unlawful there.

As per the news report, three national organizations - the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), and National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University - have contacted all three search engines last year to caution them that they were making profits from ads placed by online pharmacies acting illegally.

In a previous report, the two firms stated that they had bought prescription medications without prescription and had sent fake drugs from pharmacies adverting on bing.com.

The report added that the online pharmacies like Bing and Yahoo are the similar kind of operations that send out spam mail advertising drugs and are generally related to criminal procedures.

In August 2009, Microsoft started examining pharmacy ads physically after a research report disclosed that many sellers on its Bing search engine swanked that no prescriptions were needed and that they shipped from abroad. Both are unlawful acts in the US. Microsoft removed many suspect advertisements.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 9/1/2009

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