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Bing Warns Consumers About the Threats of Illegal Online Pharmacies

Search bar with Microsoft and Bing logos

This blog is the second in a series exploring how CSIP members are getting results in the fight against rogue online pharmacies selling fake medicines. In the first part of this series, we covered ways in which our member, Google, has been fighting back against so-called “bad ads” on their search platform. In this part, we will discuss our member Microsoft (Bing)’s efforts to warn consumers about fake online pharmacies.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) recently released the Internet Drug Outlet Identification Program Progress Report for State and Federal Regulators in January 2016. According to the report, more than 10,668 Internet drug outlets have been identified by NABP as “Not Recommended.” Most of these websites don’t have a location listed, and offer drugs that are either foreign or not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Further, 90% appear to have affiliations with rogue networks of Internet drug outlets.

CSIP members are doing a great deal to combat these “Not Recommended” pharmacies. For instance, Bing acknowledges that there is a significant risk of serious harm to the public from purchasing unsafe, counterfeit and other illegal drugs online, and expressed that they want to help their users make informed decisions. With this goal in mind, they rolled out a set of warnings to caution users who click on an illegitimate online pharmacy of the risks and to provide resources to help them, as follows:

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The warning above now appears if a Bing user clicks on a pharmaceutical site that has been cited by the FDA as a rogue online pharmacy engaged in illegal activity, such as offering potentially dangerous, unapproved and misbranded prescription drugs to U.S. consumers. It also appears if a site is reasonably suspected of containing malware.

This is an example of another warning which appears when someone does a search that can potentially lead them to unsafe online pharmacies:

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According to Bing, “The list of online pharmaceutical sites for which we are providing warnings will grow and evolve. We will continue to refine our efforts in this area and look for more opportunities to help our users make more well-informed decisions as additional, highly-reliable sources of information become available to us.”

As a result of the efforts of Microsoft and other CSIP members, it has become increasingly harder for rogue online pharmacies to effectively market their illegal services and products on the Internet. We are excited about the efforts of our members in the fight against illicit online pharmacies, and will continue to spotlight some additional efforts of other members in the coming weeks.

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The Center for Safe Internet Pharmacies (CSIP) and our 12 member companies have the shared goal of helping address the growing problem of consumer access to illegitimate pharmaceutical products on the Internet. Continue to read this blog for updates on CSIP’s education, enforcement and information-sharing efforts.