Fake Emails Sending Users to Supposed Canadian Pharmacy Website

Researchers for an internet security company are warning consumers about a new email spam campaign that is sending users to an ostensibly online Canadian pharmacy.

Avira, a German antivirus company, says that the campaign sends spam to email accounts that are similar to those associated with phishing attacks, Softpedia.com.

“In the recent past we saw emails looking like phishing mails, which were spam though actually. The spammers tried to make them look as much as possible as official mails from the entity they were faking: Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and so on,” Sorin Mustaca, manager of international software development at Avira, said.

All the links in these fraudulent emails direct consumers to a website that appears to be a Canadian pharmacy, however the domain name is registered in China.

“We checked about 100 different emails in this category and all of them use the same domain. We were curious and investigated who owns the domain – the domain is registered in China by a single registrar who owns 14 thousands other domains,” said Mustaca.

Americans are protected from counterfeit drugs when they purchase them offline from a licensed U.S. pharmacy, or if they purchase them online from a pharmacy that has been certified by the Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites, or VIPPS, program. To verify the authenticity of an online pharmacy, users can use legitscript.com.