H1N1 influenza: Buying drugs via the Internet may be dangerous, experts say

Buying Tamiflu against the H1N1 influenza on the Internet? Nothing more simple and users are more likely to do so. Beside the risk for health it enables cyber criminals to reap millions of dollars.

With the upsurge of cases of influenza A, people become more worried and Tamiflu has been exploding sales of online pharmacies for several weeks.

According to Sophos (a developer and vendor of security software and hardware), which conducted a survey on the subject, the biggest buyers are the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and France, where prescription drugs are normally sold only in pharmacies.

Primary means of promoting the drugs online is SPAM. During recent months, the Web has been a proliferation of spam touting these online pharmacies. Today, nearly 60% are selling drugs (particularly Tamiflu, the main antiviral against influenza H1N1), making hundreds of millions per year.

Buying the drugs via websites actually poses many problems, as recently Interpol pointed out: there is "no warranty as to the safety, quality or effectiveness" of the products offered by "pharmacies operating illegally and without authorization on the Internet."

The International Criminal Police Organization has also conducted a major operation and closed more than 70 sites offering drugs online.

"At best, this drug is ineffective, at worst it is a counterfeit product or improperly dosed which is harmful to health," confirms McAfee, a U.S. computer security organization.

Besides the danger for health, the transactions on these sites are sometimes used by cyber criminals for fraudulent schemes, phishing that allows criminals to retrieve data from Internet banking or placing malicious code on the computers of the Internet surfers.

This lucrative traffic makes millions of euros annually, according to the study of Sophos. The cunning techniques become more sophisticated to attract Internet users.

The problem is that those who are spoofing the search engines have nothing to fear legally, even if their purpose is reprehensible.

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