Google Pharmacy Phish

Google Pharmacy Phish

I received an e-mail today announcing the launch of "Google Pharmacy" that promised it will "improve the Google experience for people buying pills and using pharmaceutical interfaces." It included a nifty-looking Google logo that replaced the "oo" with two pills (Viagra and Cialis):

Of course, this is a "phishing" expedition - "a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication" (wikipedia).

1. I haven't clicked on the link "Visit Google's Accredited Pharmacy" although I was tempted to do it because of my interest in Google's past misdeeds that involve collusion with "rogue" pharmacies (see "Google Settles with DOJ - Admits Aiding Illegal Online Drug Sales") and 


2. Google's failed attempts to co-opt the pharmaceutical/health sector (see "Google Health is Being Shut Down").

Actually, perhaps Google should actually launch an accredited pharmacy site where people can LEGALLY purchase Rx drugs online! That might help buff up it's tarnished promise to "do no evil."

Dangerous Chemistry at Home and In Your Face! A Lesson from Pfizer Think Science Now Blog

Dangerous Chemistry at Home and In Your Face! A Lesson from Pfizer Think Science Now Blog

I just received notice that the following @pfizer_news tweet was recently posted to the "News Direct from Drug Industry" forum of Pharma Marketing Network Forums (see here):

pfizer_news: Dangerous chemistry at home. Read TSN Member Adam Gilbert's blog on Ned trying to unclog a sink/shower drain: http://on.pfizer.com/iKb4dQ

I decided to click on the link, which brought me to "Dangerous Chemistry at Home, Part 3 – Unclogging that Drain" posted on the Pfizer Think Science Now Blog. It's pretty hilarious. It's the latest installment of a series titled “What Will Ned Do Next?” in which the author Adam Gilbert -- a Pfizer chemist -- examines how his neighbor will "potentially hurt himself through his naïve understanding of chemistry using common household products."

"The real fun begins when Ned decides to mix these chemicals in an effort to bust up a tough clog quickly.

1. First he pours Liquid Plmr into his clogged drain: NaOH and sodium hypochlorite (an oxidant)
2. After a period of time, he pours Runo at the clog: mostly HCl
3. Finally, he pours in Drano: NaOH, sodium nitrate (NaNO3), sodium chloride (NaCl) and aluminum"

The results had me ROTFLOL!

But within minutes my laughter was over when I received one of those spam e-mails from "Cholesterol " bringing me unsolicited information under the subject line "Unclog your arteries."

Coincidence?

I think not. It may be a coincidence that the Pfizer blog post was about "unclogging" drains and the spam e-mail subject line referred to "unclogging," but -- as I have pointed out before -- it's no coincidence that pharma companies (especially Pfizer) are responsible for these spam e-mails (see "Pfizer is Responsible for 18% of My Spam Email!").

When I click on the "READ MORE" link on the e-mail, I am sent to a Web site that looks like this:

The VERY FIRST link on this screen (High-Cholesterol-Rx-Treatment.com; the administrative contact for this domain is Pfizer Inc. (NYHQ); see WHOIS entry) leads to the LIPITOR drug site. LIPITOR, of course, is a Pfizer drug.

What About Other Instances of "Dangerous Chemistry?"
Although Adam Gilbert's post is about his neighbor "Ned" and dangerous mixing of household chemical products, a similar blog post could easily be written about "Marge" and her dangerous mixing of prescription and over-the-counter drugs! IMHO, Pfizer should blog about that, so that their patients better understand that the chemistry of drugs can be dangerous also! The title of THAT blog post could be "Dangerous Chemistry in Your Face -- Unclogging That Artery."

Pfizer is Responsible for 18% of My Spam Email!

Pfizer is Responsible for 18% of My Spam Email!

This @pfizer_news tweet recently came to my attention:

"Pfizer, MHRA and partners anti-spam investigation FB page: http://on.fb.me/g5ULdX #realdanger"

I have been following Pfizer's campaign against counterfeit drugs for some time (see, for example, "Was a Rat Harmed in the Filming of This Pfizer Commercial?"). This "anti-spam investigation" is the latest phase of that campaign.

The Facebook page offers the report "You've Got Life-Threatening Mail" (find it here), which summarizes a study that involved 65 members of the public who volunteered to donate all their spam emails to the security teams at Pfizer and the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency -- UK's version of the FDA).

According to the introduction of this report "Spam – or unsolicited mail – is a common way fraudsters target members of the public with black market medicines. In fact, nearly 25% – that’s 15 billion messages – of all spam emails advertise medicines."

"Gareth" -- just one of the "Spam Donors" (watch out for typos there!) -- received 87 spam emails, of which 18% offered medicine. Poor "Dawn" received 228 spam emails, 9% of which offered medicine.

I decided to look in my own spam folder to see if I received any offers for Rx products. That folder currently contains over 4,000 emails (1 week's worth). I searched this folder for any email that mentioned "cholesterol" and found about 27:

I picked one with the subject line "Cholesterol is not just a number." Here's how that message looked:

I wanted to "GET THE FACTS," of course, so I clicked on that and here's the Web site that link lead me to:

The first item on the list -- "Learn About Cholesterol and a Cholesterol-Lowering Treatment" -- brought me to (you guessed it!) this LIPITOR Web page:

It took me a few clicks, but I found that Pfizer is one of those companies responsible for some (OK, maybe NOT 18%) of the SPAM email that I get!

It's ironic that Pfizer is trying to alert consumers about the dangers of spam email when they themselves are responsible for some of this spam. Of course, LIPITOR is not a dangerous counterfeit medication that is offered without a prescription via lipitor.com. Technically, therefore, Pfizer's spam would not qualify to be included in its report on "Life-threatening Mail." But it's still SPAM paid for by Pfizer!

I did a little more investigation to see if I could find out where my spam cholesterol email was coming from.

In the box at the end of the email is a "dotmedia" logo. That lead me to this site. But a note at the bottom of my spam email said "You are receiving this email from InterG Media." The top Google search result on "InterG Media" lead me to this WHOSIS domain registration data:

REGISTRANT CONTACT INFO
InterG Media
Domain Admin
1154 N. Sycamore Ave.
Suite 11
Los Angeles

BILLING CONTACT INFO
Adknowledge
Domain Admin
4600 Madison Ave.
1000
Kansas City

I ignored the REGISTRANT CONTACT and went straight to BILLING CONTACT INFO to find "Adknowledge," the entity that pays the bills. On its website (here) I discovered that Adknowledge claims to be the "leading long tail marketplace." Here's more "About" them:

"Adkowledge, the fourth largest advertiser marketplace, specializes in performance-based marketing solutions utilizing its powerful predictive technology and completely anonymous consumer response patterns to connect advertisers with consumers across multiple channels, including email, search, domains, and social networks. With over 60 terabytes of anonymous consumer behavior data, our proprietary targeting systems run over 20 billion calculations per day to determine what ad to show to each consumer. Over 10,000 advertisers use the Adknowledge ad network to promote their offers."

OK. From this, here's how I see Pfizer being a perpetrator of SPAM.

Obviously, the money to pay for my SPAM email has to come directly or indirectly from the marketers of the products advertised, which includes LIPITOR/Pfizer. I don't think Pfizer is paying InterG Media, the entity that supposedly sent me the email. InterG Media is probably just the technical geniuses behind Adknowledge's "predictive technology." No, someone hired Adknowledge -- maybe it was Pfizer itself or maybe it was a "media buyer" hired by Pfizer (or its LIPITOR ad agency of record) to send ads to consumers via the Internet.

What's the lesson learned? When you get SPAM email -- "threatening" or not -- you have to find the "long tail" back to who pays the piper. As Deep Throat said "follow the money."

Pharma Email Spam: Three Degrees of Separation for Merck, Pfizer, and Genentech

Pharma Email Spam: Three Degrees of Separation for Merck, Pfizer, and Genentech

Soon after I posted a blog entry and tweeted about cholesterol-lowering drugs (see here), I "coincidentally" received the following e-mail message (click for an enlarged, readable view):

I do not remember opting in to receive email from Insyst Media -- the company that sent me this email. But, who knows, it may be one of those "third-party partners" of a website where I signed up to learn more about cholesterol.

So, naturally, I clicked on the "GET THE FACTS" button and was delivered to this intriguing Web page (click on image for an enlarged, more readable view):

Again,I don't recall opting in to any list maintained by  SearchNext, which is the company that seems responsible for this page. But being really curious where all this was leading, I obey and click on the button as indicated and end up on this page (click on image for an enlarged, more readable view):

Needless to say, I also never opted in to receive ads from FreshDeals.com --the entity that maintains this page. But I suspected that I was getting close to the sources who paid for all these companies to deliver ads to me. So I click on each ad on this page and discover that the top three links lead to pharmaceutical drug.com sites. One leads to Vytorin (Merck), another to Lipitor (Pfizer), and the third takes me to Zetia (also Merck). The last link goes to a Genentech non-branded site.

Following the Money Trail
I'm not interested in tracking down ALL these entities. I did, however, learn that SearchNext is a "pay-per-click advertiser marketplace [that] makes it easy to expand your already successful Google campaigns. Simply send us a dump of your AdWords campaigns and we will target your best converting keywords, geos and demos with our proprietary targeting and user qualification platform to turn users searching for your products into sales."

This "marketplace" conveniently puts 3 degrees of separation between the spam email I received and the pharmaceutical advertiser:

Pharmaco --- Fresh Deals --- SearchNext --- Insyst Media -- ME

I wonder if Merck, Pfizer, and Genentech realize that their Adword campaign is paying for spam e-mail? With 40% of pharma's online advertising budget allocated to search marketing, I can't imagine them NOT knowing!