Spotlight on KnujOn: Combating Counterfeits Online, Part 4

This is part four of our interview with Garth Bruen, co-founder of KnujOn, an internet compliance company. We talked to him about the KnujOn system, search engine advertising and what’s needed from regulatory bodies to protect Web users from counterfeit and substandard drug solicitations online.

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

PSM: In your estimation, how many advertisers have been shut down due to the KnujOn system?

GB: This can be difficult to quantify. We can count the number of illicit domains we’ve terminated, which is in the hundreds of thousands.

The advertisers, however, belong to complex networks that are fairly nimble but ultimately depend on the tacit cooperation of established service providers. The public perception is that e-crime is run by secretive persons outside the infrastructure. While that is partially true, we are seeing more and more corruption within the internet infrastructure. We’ve reported on several internet companies that were apparently partnered with criminal groups or accepted large amounts of money from them. Until these companies are issued fines or shut down completely they will continue to provide services to criminal networks.

Coming up: The conclusion of our interview with Garth, and his recommendations for policymakers.