What if millions of spam e-mails were sent out every day with your name — or your company’s name — on them? What do you think that would do to your reputation?

Unfortunately, this is a nightmare that many legitimate Canadian pharmacies are living today.

As ITBusiness.ca reports:

“To most people, ‘Canadian Pharmacy’ means just another spam e-mail message promising cheap Viagra pills that is deleted in microseconds – but to David Zimmer, it’s a reputation nightmare for his business.

“Zimmer is the owner of Winnipeg-based The Canadian Pharmacy, a small company that legitimately sells pharmaceuticals over the Internet to American customers…

“But when his company is confused with the almost identically-named spammer group, his reputation takes a drubbing. ‘It’s a big pain for us,’ he says. He says he gets inundated with complaints from angry victims of these spammers who haven’t received their medication.”

The most frustrating part is, these spam operations aren’t based in Canada at all. The biggest, in fact, is the Russian-based organization that calls itself “Canadian Pharmacy.” It sends as many as 60 billion spam e-mails per day. It has been known to ship counterfeit and adulterated medications to unwitting consumers who order from its many sites.

Says Zimmer:

“I’ve considered changing our brand,” he says. “When people confuse us with Canadian Pharmacy, that hurts our ability to market ourselves by word of mouth.”

It doesn’t help matters that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry has taken advantage of the confusion and tried to tar legitimate pharmacies with the same brush as rogue spammers — a dishonest but effective PR ploy that has duped more than a few members of the U.S. news media.

You would think the problem of e-mail spam from so-called Canadian pharmacies (which are actually fronts for criminal organizations in Russia and elsewhere) couldn’t get worse.

Unfortunately, you’d be wrong.

According to the latest data from McAfee and MX Logic:

Both security firms see “pharmaceutical spam,” at almost 90% of all spam, as the single largest type of spam in terms of content, with one in particular, known as Canadian Pharmacy, the undisputed dominant force.

Criminals sending spam rely on hijacked “zombie” machines that have been taken over by malware, and the number of zombies around the world is said to be rising by an estimated 150,000 every day. “In the U.S. alone, there are 2.1 million new zombies, up 33% from the last period,” the McAfee report states. McAfee estimates there are a total 14 million computers “enslaved by cybercriminal botnets.”

Researchers also said that more than 90 percent of all e-mail can be classified as spam — which would suggest that more than 80 percent of ALL e-mails are pharmacy spam.

ScamWatch, an Australian government Web site dedicated to protecting consumers, offers the following five warning signs that you’ve received a pharmacy spam e-mail –

1. You receive an unsolicited email offering cheap or hard-to-get pills or treatments. Often, these emails will promote well-known drugs such as Prozac or Viagra.

2. The subject title of the email has nothing to do with the products on offer.

3. The words in the email are spelt incorrectly or have apostrophes and spaces in the middle of the words. This is done to try to avoid anti-spam filters.

4. The email or website will sell you drugs that you would normally need a prescription for, even if you don’t have a prescription.

5. The pharmacy’s website is based overseas or does not include a contact telephone number or street address.

The site also recommends the follow seven ways to protect yourself –

1. Use your common sense: the offer may be a scam.

2. Be very careful about offers for medicines, supplements or other treatments: always seek the advice of your health care professional.

3. Do not open suspicious or unsolicited emails (spam): delete them.

4. Do not click on any links in a spam email, or open any files attached to them.

5. Never call a telephone number that you see in a spam email.

6. Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.

7. Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website that you are not certain is genuine.

As rumors swirl that pop superstar Michael Jackson may have been killed by an accidental overdose of Demerol, Diprivan and other medications, it is ironic that shady prescription drug pushers are still abusing the King of Pop, even after his death.

That’s right. No-prescription pharmacy scammers are using Michael Jackson’s death as the bait in their latest spam e-mail campaigns.

According to the Xinhua news agency:

Computer security firms are warning users to be vigilant about spam messages capitalizing on the sudden death of U.S. pop star Michael Jackson. Security firm Sophos … reported that about eight hours after Jackson’s death, its experts witnessed the first wave of spam messages taking advantage of the breaking news in the subject line and body of the email.

In these messages, the spammers claimed that they have vital information about the death of Michael Jackson to share and asked for a reply … [Experts] said users should be wary of spam emails offering links to “news” or “pictures” of deceased celebrities, which most of the time will lead to websites touting pharmacy products …

The spammers have outdone themselves again.

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.”

Good news: e-mail spam for the erectile dysfunction medications Viagra, Cialis and Levitra is finally on the decline — apparently because consumers are wising up to these scams.

According to Microsoft research:

Last year the amount of e-mails for sexual medications made up around 30 percent of all spam e-mails; however, this year that figure has dropped to under 10 percent.

There is only one reason why this is happening, and that is because spammers are not getting returns on their investment, which probably is due to men becoming wiser and more wary about replying to these types of e-mails.

We’ve covered the problem of Viagra spam previously (including Viagra holiday spam!) It’s good to know that people are beginning to listening.

If you are receiving unwanted e-mails from no-prescription pharmacies, particularly from the same source again and again, you obviously want to stop those messages from appearing in your inbox.

So when the message you receive concludes with an offer to delete you from the mailing list, it’s tempting to click the “unsubscribe” link or reply to the e-mail with a “remove me” request, isn’t it?

Don’t do it!

Most pharmacy spammers send out well over a million spams every day to lists scraped and stolen from all over the Internet. These spammers have no idea which of the addresses on their lists are functional and currently in use, and which are not.

Until you click a link or send a reply, that is.

As Spamhaus explains:

By sending back a ‘remove me’ opt-out request you are confirming to the spammer that your address is live, you are confirming that your ISP doesn’t use spam filters, you are confirming that you actually open and read spams, and that you follow the spammer’s instructions such as “click this to be removed”. You are the perfect candidate for more spam.

A live address is a valuable address, spammers sell live addresses at a premium as “confirmed deliverable” addresses to yet more spammers. If you don’t want your address to end up on endless spammers’ lists, distributed on spam CDROMs to spammers worldwide, do not confirm to the spammer that your address is real and working.

Never Opt-out of lists you did not Opt-in to in the first place.

U.S. laws are strict against sending unsolicited bulk email. If someone is spamming you, chances are the perpetrator is based overseas and, in many cases, linked to criminal syndicates.

Believe us, you don’t want to deal with people like that — even in a seemingly innocuous e-mail reply.