Rogue Pharmacy Spam Exposed by Image Hosting Service

Pharmaceutical spammers have been using image hosting services to promote their products and one service has responded by giving its patrons a strong warning.

Reports Brian Krebs, Image Shack has replaced the rogue pharmacy images with warning signs, including universal symbols for caution, poison and health hazards. In addition, they’ve replaced the spammers’ catch phrases with “This is a Scam. Do not click anything here,” and “Fake pills. Your money will be stolen.”

They also included two bit.ly links to the wikipedia entries for two well-known rogue pharmacy email scams.

Image hosting services allow customers to upload photographs that can be redistributed through hotlinks on websites, messageboards and emails privately, without a public link. In the case of the hot links the spammers sent out, anyone receiving those links would find the rogue pharmacy advertisements replaced with the warning symbols.

Recent reports show that about 90 percent of emails sent are spam, of which 85 percent is pharmaceutical spam. That means approximately 77 percent of emails are pharmaceutical spam.