9,000 such sites have been taken down by authorities, but many of them are still online

Jul 3, 2013 19:21 GMT  ·  By

Last week, we learned that authorities from all over the world took part in an operation aimed at disrupting the activities of rogue online pharmacies. A total of 9,000 websites were taken down, but we’re still far from seeing the end of such shady businesses.

According to Hoax Slayer, there’s a new spam campaign that’s used to trick internauts into visiting Canadian pharmacy websites.

The spam run relies on bogus Facebook updates and messages that purport to come from Facebook Support.

They inform recipients that they have some missed notifications or that someone has sent them a message.

However, the links from the emails don’t lead to Facebook, but to a rogue pharmacy website.

These shady websites don’t usually serve malware, since their main purpose is to get users to purchase products from them. So, if you click on the links from such bogus Facebook emails by mistake and you end up on such a site, you should be safe, especially if an antivirus program is running in the background.

However, make sure you don’t purchase anything, since the products advertised by these sites could be counterfeit or potentially dangerous substitutes for the real medicines. Not to mention the fact that you’re handing over financial information to scammers.