Pfizer and Microsoft go after Viagra Spammers

Weird_Hock writes "This story from Reuters tells about the joint effort from Pfizer and Microsoft to go after illegal sellers of Viagra. Pfizer is going after the sellers and Microsoft after the spammers. Looks like they're targeting both sides of the money chain."

I forward all WinXP spams to MS

[wowbagger]

I forward all spams I get that offer Microsoft software on to MS.

I figure that I'll let MS spend their money on going after the spammers - after all, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, and is useful to me.

I get a nice auto-ack from MS with a tracking number for each report. What does that mean? That I get a nice auto-ack from MS with a tracking number - I have no way of knowing for sure that they do anything with the reports.

But hey, it if nukes a spammer and/or costs MS money, then it's worth it.

Trademark dilution?

[Tackhead]

I remember the first time I started seeing Viagra (and other prescription drug) spam. It was long enough ago that I figured the pharma companies would want to crack down on it.

Up until that point, I'd been getting spams for "pharmaceutical" (read: "quackery) products, like the usual "herbal penis pills", "natural apricot pits cancer cure!", "b00st your immune system", "legal pot substitute", and so on.

If I'd never heard of Viagra before, I'd have lumped it in along with phen-phen, ephedra, and laetrile as the quack medicines I'd historically been getting spams for: that is, substances of questionable efficacy, safety, and/or legality.

Quickly now, (off the top of your head, without googling and without being a pharmacist), which of the following - Effexor, Paxil, Viagra, Cialis, Phenteramine, Valium, Xanax, Soma, Lipitor, Zyban, Zantrex, Xenical, Meridia and Fioricet - are "real" medicines (that is, which have been approved by FDA for the treatment of medical conditions), and which are fake/quack/banned?

If you get even one false-positive (that is, a "real" drug that a reasonable person dismiss es as "quacky" due to its prevalence in spam), I'd say the manufacturer of that drug has a prima facie case for trademark dilution against every spammer who spammed for it.

Spam in general

[mszeto]

Since I had moderator points, I wanted to read all the crap that gets posted and see if there was anything that needed to be modded up. I was very dissapointed to hardly see *anything* relevant to the topic other than lame jokes.

I think that this will be good for users. Both companies have something to gain by there being less spam, and thus it will help both companies bottom lines to get rid of it.

What I hope they *don't* do (since both companies are large) is throw money at the problem and hope it gets fixed.

I think this is a good day for the internet in general!

Re:I forward all WinXP spams to MS

[pe1chl]

I forward them the lottery scams that refer to domains registered on their "MSN Personal domains" service.
They do not seem to care.

Interestingly enough, the names shifted from (variations on) cashchangeukltd.org, which is just the name of a fraudulent organization, to (variations on) ms-wordpromo.com, which could be seen as a trademark violation by their triggerhappy lawyers. You know, those that went after names like mikerowesoft.com because it was too much like a trademark they registered.

But despite several reports, nothing seems to happen. They just go on facilitating fraud, and even do so under their own trademarked names.

I start to believe that there is nothing more than a tracking number generator behind those reporting addresses, and the big Microsoft company is not interested in abuse of its trademarks.

Re:Now if they would only attack WaMu phishers

[Christianfreak]

If you have anything to do at all the administration of your mail server then I would suggest looking into greylisting [greylisting.org]. Has helped tremendously with the volume of spam I receive to the server I admin because it forces spammers to use a single point to send spam from (a point which you can identify).

Also ClamAV [clamav.net] can be used to scan incoming email on the server side and has definitions for many phishing attacks as well as worms and viruses.

They're ALL crap if they're sold over the Internet

[BattyMan]

Particularly without a prescr|pti0n.

V1@gr4, C|al1$, 0xycOnt1n and the rest of those (the real ones) are PRESCRIPTION drugs - "Controlled Substances" - the distribution of which (without proper licensing & documentation) is a Big Federal Felony(tm). Anyone "selling" any of those things on the Internet is selling - at best - fakes, and is more likely a simple fraud.

Even if they're doing it from offshore, selling the REAL stuff (particularly narcotics like Oxyc0d0ne) is a big enough crime (in the US) to obtain action from Interpol resulting in extradition of the offenders. These are scams, every bit as much as Muhammed Al-Quedah, who wants to cut you in on the $22e6 which he skimmed out of Sadam's treasury, and now needs your (confidential) help to get it out of the Netherlands.

Is Microsoft friend or enemy?

[Vitus Wagner]

Lets consider this problem:

What good they did to me?

• They create very big market for powerful 32-bit PC. If anybody still use 8-bit CP/M machines, I doubd that I could afford dual PIV with 1Gb RAM at home to run real OS on it. It seems good. But I suspect that i could be just as happy with some 300Mhz UltraSparc.
  
• They create potential market for software I write. But really I make my living from market where computers was used long before PC era.
  

What bad they did for me:

• They are ultimate cause of spam, adware and other crap which fills my internet channels now. They give millions of uneducated users access f\to internet by selling internet-enabled OS and telling that no education is required to use it.
  
• They pushed their complex and closed document formats as standard de-facto. Yeh, I got some pride from community for writing catdoc [free.net], but I'd rather live in the world where I don't need to write such strange thing just to read price-lists downloaded from Internet.
  
• They are hugely responsible for degradation of computer science education. They created so big demand for second-class coders, that no one teaches good programmers nowadays. It is quite hard to us to find new employees. And this is in Russia. I think in US it is much worse.
  
• They also create demand for IE-only internet sites, and encourage uneducated webmasters to do this silly designs, which render blinking pages almost unreadble.