Fraud warning of fake drug web sites

A lack of regulation of on-line pharmacies is putting people at risk from fake medicines, the UK's public broadcaster, the BBC, reports. A study of more than 3,000 web sites found prescription drugs for sale without oversight and some that were likely to be counterfeit or beyond their expiry dates. In addition, fraud advisers MarkMonitor also found that customer details were not properly safeguarded, leaving buyers open to "identify theft" and credit fraud.

The UK's Royal Pharmaceutical Society has announced proposals for dealing with the problem by adopting a logo scheme to help consumers identify genuine sites (Marketletter November 13, 2006). However, Michael Masnick, chief executive of Techdirt, a Belmont, California, USA-based corporate intelligence firm, described the scheme as RPS scheme as "useless." The logo would only be enforceable on UK-based web sites, whereas the evidence shows that many suppliers are effective at disguising their true country of origin. Mr Masnick concluded that "it sounds as if this particular plan is only going to make people think they're safer when they may not be."