Microsoft Allows ‘Rogue’ Pharmacies in Sponsored Results, Report Says

Microsoft declined repeated requests to discuss the claims in the report. “We take these claims very seriously and are currently investigating this issue,” a spokesperson told us. “Microsoft’s guidelines clearly require online pharmacies who advertise on Bing to adhere to U.S. laws.” Domain registrar GoDaddy.com, which has shut down thousands of rogue pharmacies and lobbied for a federal bill later signed into law to better regulate them (WID Oct 17 p6), couldn’t comment by our deadline on the relative difficulty of identifying rogue pharmacies.

Horton said LegitScript wasn’t “picking on” Microsoft, which has a far smaller share of the search market than Google or Yahoo. LegitScript’s report on Microsoft is the first in a planned series from LegitScript and its research partner, Web site and domain fraud investigator KnujOn, on U.S. companies that “facilitate, and in some cases profit, from illicit sales” of drugs online, he said. “Simply put, we had to start somewhere,” though Microsoft, Yahoo and Google all use PharmacyChecker.com to verify the credentials of online pharmacies that seek to place search ads.

But LegitScript tried on “numerous occasions” to discuss rogue pharmacies with Microsoft starting in early 2008, and in February this year notified Microsoft that a test purchase from one pharmacy returned real drugs without a prescription, Horton said: “The ad stayed up.” The major search engines also have heard from the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, American Pharmacists Association and National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University just this year about the problem of rogues in ads, Horton said. LegitScript has worked with registrars to shut down more than 2,000 sites, approved 200 pharmacies as legitimate and gets daily reports from organizations around the world, which go into its searchable public database of 40,000 pharmacies, he said.

No Prescription Required, Drugs Shipped from Abroad

The report by LegitScript and KnujOn said 62 of 69 sponsored results from Bing for prescription drugs returned sites that were clearly in violation of U.S. law -- not requiring a prescription or giving prescriptions without an in-person doctor visit, sourced from unlicensed pharmacies or those offering unapproved drugs from outside the U.S. One purchase returned counterfeit drugs shipped from India, a violation of Microsoft’s policy to accept ads only from companies whose supplies come from the U.S. or Canada. Most of the pharmacies reviewed didn’t require a prescription for drugs including addictive medicines and controlled substances. Some ads named a legitimate U.S. online pharmacy but directed clicks to a different illicit pharmacy, the report said.

Microsoft has the ability to deal a “crippling, even fatal, blow” to the business of rogue pharmacies by denying them “real estate” on Bing, the report said. Besides the danger to public health from prescription drug abuse and counterfeit drugs, illicit pharmacies have been linked to Russian and Chinese organized crime groups. There’s precedent for a search engine’s responsibility for its sponsored links, the report said -- the Justice Department’s multimillion-dollar settlements with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft over their acceptance of ads for Internet gambling (WID Dec 20/07 p7).

Customers may believe ads labeled “sponsored” have been endorsed by Microsoft as “safe and legitimate,” and legitimate pharmacies can lose their reputation and goodwill when illicit pharmacies misappropriate their domain names in the Bing ads, the report said. The Microsoft ad system lets advertisers set up a “destination” address that’s different than the “display” address in the ad text, and though Microsoft policy says the two “should at least be similar, this report suggests that enforcement is either lax or nonexistent.”

The report highlights 10 sample ads or Web sites to which ads redirect. Choice-rx.com, which claims to be based in the Seychelles and ship from India but whose site is hosted in Panama and owned by a Russian company, was the first sponsored result for a search of “generic meds,” the report said. Microsoft could have known “in a matter of seconds” the advertised site wasn’t legitimate because it was selling drugs that don’t exist, including “Cialis soft,” a knockoff of the Lilly & Co. erectile-dysfunction drug. K2med.com has been misappropriating the name of a legitimate pharmacy, Indiana-based DailyMedRx.com, to sell drugs without a prescription on behalf of Russian criminal organization 33 Drugs, and it comes up in Bing results on a search for “buy viagra.” Microsoft hasn’t responded to LegitScript’s notices in late 2008 and early 2009 about K2med ads, which continued to display through mid-2009, the report said. Another concern for legitimate pharmacies is whether they are getting charged by Microsoft for ads that redirect to illicit storefronts, it said. MedsPharmacySupport.com, which is the contact company for Microsoft-advertised BestRxCanada.com, is registered by “one of the world’s most notorious spammers,” Andrew Smirnov, which Microsoft could have easily learned, the report said.

Horton said LegitScript wasn’t simply angling for business from search engines currently using PharmacyChecker for verification. “The issue isn’t a competitive one -- it’s that the system isn’t working,” based on LegitScript’s test purchases. The company has recommended that search engines require online pharmacies to get accredited under the pharmacy board’s VIPPS program, and only consider LegitScript’s certification program as a backup, because VIPPS is the “gold standard,” Horton said. “The search engines can choose whomever they want, but it’s their responsibility to make sure that the solution really works.” He said LegitScript hasn’t discussed the issue with any lawmakers or congressional committees. The House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee was the last to consider regulation of online pharmacies, before last year’s bill was signed (WID June 25/08 p1).