Earlier this month, I wrote about the problem of pharmacy spam sneaking into Google News results. Well, the problem has now reached epidemic proportions.

As recently as a couple of months ago, you could track terms like “Canadian pharmacies” and “no prescription pharmacies” and “online pharmacies” on Google News to find the latest news on drug reimportation, online pharmacy safety, and other issues that we follow here at the Online Pharmacy Blog.

Today, spam has virtually choked off our ability to use Google News to follow what’s going on in the online pharmacy world. And it’s goes beyond online pharmacies. Even broader terms like “prescription drugs” have succumb to the spam problem.

And don’t even think about searching for news items on Viagra, Cialis or Levitra with Google News!

Apparently the reason for the spam problem is that a lot of legitimate news sites have set up community forums and other sections of their sites where they allow visitors to post stories for publication without any editing or moderating in advance. Spammers have picked up on this little opening and are now driving through it with a semi truck.

Just to give you an idea of what you’re dealing with if you search for specific terms using Google News, or if you sign up for Google News Alerts:

• “Canadian pharmacies”: 12 of the first 13 Google News results are spam.
• “online pharmacies”: 10 of the first 11 Google News results are spam.
• “no prescription pharmacies”: 8 of the first 12 Google News results are spam.
• “prescription drugs”: Even on a day when Michael Jackson’s apparent prescription drug overdose is the biggest news story in the world, the first page of Google News results still has one spam entry.

Google needs to fix this. And Google’s news sources need to start moderating their community sections, because this has gotten ridiculous.

eSoft, a Web security company, researches urls across the Internet to provide up-to-the minute threat assessments on fraudulent sites, according to Richard Stiennon at Information Security Resources. The most notable development of the past week, eSoft reports, has been a spike in fake pharma sites.

Writes Stiennon:

eSoft has determined that there has been a major spike in fraudulent pharmacy sites just this past week. Much like the fake SpySweeper site these pharma-fraud sites present a convincing storefront that appears to sell Viagra and Cialis.

They have a sophisticated shopping cart system and take your money but do not bother with actually fulfilling orders.

eSoft provided me with data on seven different templates they have discovered. The quantity is amazing. In four days last week they detected:

1,104 canadian_pharm_light_blue
993 canadian_pharm_blue
27 top_pharmacy
23 canadian_pharm_white
18 health_sol
6 canadian_pharm_blue2
1 canadian_pharm_p_images

That is 543 of these sites per day over four days — and only for these seven templates.

eSoft reports that many of these sites (one of the suspect templates is pictured at left) can be traced to the Russian mafia. Concludes Stiennon:

“If the Russian Mafia is involved expect to see these stolen credit cards used in so called carding schemes where counterfeit credit cards are manufactured using the data collected from these sites.

“End users will have to be very careful when using their credit cards to purchase anything. The threats to ecommerce are escalating.”

We’ve always liked Google’s approach to distributing the news. Google News aggregates headlines from about 5,000 English-language news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together, and then displays them based on your keyword search or customized options.

As Google explains:

Traditionally, news readers first pick a publication and then look for headlines that interest them. We do things a little differently, with the goal of offering our readers more personalized options and a wider variety of perspectives from which to choose.

Our articles are selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other things, how often and on what sites a story appears online. We also rank based on certain characteristics of news content such as freshness, location, relevance and diversity.

Google News sources are mostly old-school media sources, such as newspapers, television channels and wire services, as well as some of the more prominent blogs and online publications. But now, pharmacy spammers are finding a way into Google News search results.

In running a search for Viagra, for example, you’ll find spam posted on the domains of media sites ranging from Motley Fool to MyFox Austin. In some cases, the spam is pulled quickly, but in other cases it isn’t.

Here’s the first paragraph of a story found on MyFox Austin’s site:

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The reason spam is creeping onto these sites is that they have created “community” sections that allow site visitors to post their own news items. Clearly, however, these media sources are not doing enough to keep spam from undermining their sites.

Source

McAfee, the security software maker, has issued a new report detailing the most dangerous search terms on the Internet.

One of the biggest surprises, according to Security Pro News, is that terms aimed at children — like “Jonas Brothers” and “free games” — are far risker than online pharmacy spam terms, such as “Viagra.” According to the publication:

Viagra, a popular spam keyword, did not turn out to be as risky as other terms, probably not because the Viagra-using population is less Web savvy, but more likely because there is a smaller demographic searching for information about it.

McAfee’s report says the spammers’ biggest targets are children, who are thought to be less careful in avoiding sites containing spyware, viruses and other dangers.

Other risky keywords include “free games,” “Rihanna,” “Webkinz,” “Powerball” and “iPhone.”