Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by somestuff 5250 days ago
That is where Google crossed the line into being evil, bypassing their own internal checks and regulations accepting cash for ads to sites that never were associated with any real pharmacy or any product at all. Judging by Glavmed's success and shadier sites with shop fronts calling themselves "Canadian" this is totally not isolated to one paid snitch.

These rogue pharmas source from India for generics, wherever they can to buy branded narcotics, and lord knows where for counterfeit opiates/benzos. Real Canadian pharmacies used to be more directly involved selling to the US, including narcotics, but that was years ago. The dirty bit is not at the pharmacy selling to people with prescriptions but those knowingly diverting to unscripted use, or the mules who use doctors to fill out scripts that then get sold. Then at the pharma affiliate networks paying spammers for traffic. Spammers paying google for adverts pointing to shop fronts. GOOGLE ACCEPTING CASH AND BYPASSING THEIR CHECKS THAT SEE IF ALL THE ACTORS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY ARE LEGIT who then post the adverts to the shop fronts who may or may not be listed as Canadian who may or may not be sourcing via legal means from what may or may not be a Canadian pharmacy.

Krebsonsecurity.com has multiple write-ups on these types of operations which use advertisers like Google for traffic. In this case though Google employees at multiple levels went beyond just being a provider of traffic to being an co-partner in the conspiracy.