Safety concerns regarding buying prescription medications online pharmacy revolve around issues pertaining to your personal health, the legality of transactions, and protection of your personal information. Online pharmacies provide convenience and other advantages such as privacy and in some cases cheaper prices compared to the traditional brick and mortar pharmacy, but without due diligence the buying of prescription medication online can be fraught with a number of deleterious pitfalls.

To ensure the safety of prescription medications the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that medications go through safety clinical trials, and that the benefits outweigh the risks associated with a drug before it is approved for marketing and sale in the United States. Unfortunately pharmacists outside the United States that dispense drugs manufactured outside of the United States are not bound by federal regulations, posing a health hazard for those who choose to purchase from them. Because some pharmacies, even within the United States, import and distribute non-FDA approved drugs manufactured outside of the country, it is important to make sure that the online pharmacy you choose only dispenses FDA approved prescription medications. The main concerns about purchasing prescription medication from rogue online pharmacies that dispense drugs not approved by the FDA approved are, the drugs you receive might be counterfeit, contaminated, sub-potent, super potent or the wrong drug, all of which could jeopardize your health. In the worst-case scenario, you may not receive any medication at all despite paying for it. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the online pharmacy is licensed and based in the United States and if not that it is accredited and dispenses drugs approved by its government.

Since rogue pharmacies tend to want to be invisible and unreachable except in cyberspace, it is important to obtain up-to-date contact information in the form of a physical address and telephone number. With that information you can attempt to obtain a Better Business Bureau report. If a Better Business Bureau report is not available you can then do an advanced Dun & Bradstreet search to make sure that the business does in fact exist. Avoid doing business with operations that only provide you with an e-mail address as a form of contact. In addition to possibly precluding you from obtaining credentials and information about business practices, the provision of just an e-mail address might be an indicator of the quality of customer service you can expect or not expect. Also obtain the license number and any accreditation credentials from the pharmacy then verify the information through the state pharmacy board of the state in which the pharmacy is based, an all important step because some of the alleged Internet pharmacies are not really legitimate licensed operations. In addition to verifying license status and the fact that the pharmacy is located in the United States and meets quality standards, state boards of pharmacy or the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) can also let you know if an online pharmacy is accredited by Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) or other recognized accreditation programs. VIPPS pharmacy sites can also be identified by the VIPPS hyperlink seal displayed on their Web sites.

Many pharmacies online advertise the filling of prescriptions without a doctor’s order which can certainly be a health hazard if a prescription is filled without a thorough knowledge and understanding of your health record. The pharmacies that do this tend to hurdle the legal requirement of a doctor/patient relationship by having you fill out a questionnaire which is supposedly reviewed with you by their doctor during a telephone consultation. If you elect to participate in this type of interaction and relationship (which I do not recommend) be sure that the pharmacy engaging in this practice is compliant with the telemedicine laws of the state in which it is based since the definition of the establishment of a doctor/patient relationship varies from state to state. Also obtain the credentials of the doctor providing the telephone consultation including the state in which he or she is licensed and the license number, then verify that information through the medical board of the state in which the doctor is licensed to make sure that a valid license is held for the state in which you are located at the time of the telephone consultation. Otherwise the alleged relationship established by telephone and Internet would not be a legitimate one inasmuch as the interaction would be tantamount to the practice of medicine without a license. The take-home message is avoid buying prescription medications online without the order of a physician who is thoroughly familiar with your health history based not only on subjective information, but objective data as well including a physical examination, laboratory tests and x-rays if warranted. A doctor’s order also prevents the unauthorized substitution of generic prescription medication for brand-name medication, so make sure you know whether or not their doctor has authorized generic substitution, and if not be sure to know what the brand-name pill looks like before it arrives following shipment. The best way to be familiar with what brand-name pills look like is to order the first prescription from a local pharmacy and keep one or two of the pills in their respective bottles for comparison when your shipment arrives.

Although the legal ramifications of not being compliant with federal and state laws regarding the sale, importation and distribution of pharmaceutical medications generally rest with the pharmacy, the purchase and possession of controlled substances such as narcotics without a doctor’s prescription can result in legal consequences for the buyer, depending on the state of residence. Thus, the message is the same. Do not buy prescription medications, particularly controlled substances, without a doctor’s prescription. If you are elect to purchase medication not available in the United States and not approved by the FDA from a foreign Internet pharmacy for treatment of a condition for which your doctor feels it is indicated, be sure to obtain and keep on record a letter or note from your physician stating that.

After you have conducted the above research and you are satisfied with the results the final step should be to make sure that any private personal information submitted is protected and that your online transactions are secure. Make sure that the particular website has a well stated privacy policy assuring you that your information will not be shared with or sold to anyone for the purpose of marketing thus making you a target for spam e-mailing. Also make sure that your online credit card purchase is secure to protect yourself from identity theft. This can generally be done by looking for the lock icon to the right of the address bar of your browser before entering your credit card and other transaction information. Since credit card transactions can never be 100% secure because of what might happen to the information after is retrieved from the system, it is reasonable to find out whether or not the pharmacy will accept other forms of payment or even file with your insurance company.

In summary, do the necessary and appropriate investigation of an online pharmacy before buying medications online so as to optimize the likelihood of a medically, legally, financially and emotionally safe buying experience.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purpose only and is not intended to be legal advice or a substitute for medical consultation with a qualified professional. If you are seeking legal advice or are unsure about your medical condition you should consult an attorney and/or physician.

Protect Yourself From Online Fraud

Being in the online medication industry for over two years has taught us much, but one of the most important lessons we have learnt is how to tell a scam pharmacy from a real pharmacy. You must be very vigilant in determining who you trust when you order online. We suggest you take note of the following.

Do they have contact information readily available?

Would you trust your medications when they come from a company you can only ever contact through an email address? More than 90% of the online pharmacies out there do not list phone numbers or addresses and this lack of contact information says many things about the pharmacy:

1. We don’t want to talk to you and

2. We want to remain anonymous

But it doesn’t stop at the phone number, because what a lot of online pharmacies are doing nowadays is outsourcing their call center to a 3rd party whose primary job is just to take orders. This is important to take note of because when a company outsources its call center they still separate themselves from the customers and maintain their degree of anonymity. When you combine this with the fact that they can pick up and move their operation literally overnight; this is a scary thing indeed. This is not to say that all pharmacies that outsource are fraudulent, it is just something to take note of when you are doing your due-diligence.

The next piece of information you want to look for is the company’s physical mailing address. The only reason a company would not provide this piece of information is to once again hide their true identity/location and this is a very common indication of fraud.

Next time you visit a pharmacy be sure to click their “Contact” page and see what information they have available to contact them by. You may be very surprised.

How did you hear about the pharmacy?

Where did you hear about the pharmacy? Obviously the best way to hear about any pharmacy is from word of mouth but when you are online that is not always the case. There are so many ways to advertise on the internet that weeding out the good from the bad may seem daunting, but is rather quite easy. The absolute worst place to hear about any pharmacy is unsolicited email (otherwise known as SPAM) and then next worst would probably be pay-per-click (where pharmacies bid on keywords that you search for), although if the pharmacy is bidding on pay-per-click through Google Ad words (google.com) or Overture (yahoo.com, msn.com, etc) then they now are required to participate in Square Trade (a licensing body that governs online pharmacies and validates their legitimacy) before they can advertise. These pharmacies are supposed to be legit, but the screening process for them are certainly not perfect and on more than one occasion we have encountered known fraudulent sites to pop up from time to time, so be careful!

Other forms of advertising are banner ads and affiliate sites and these all must be taken with a BAG of salt. To put it in perspective, those are all “paid” advertisements and there is no one verifying anything they promote. The only reason one website would advertise another website such as a pharmacy is to obtain a sort of commission in return. So if they are being paid to refer you to a pharmacy, the only thing they care about is which pharmacy will pay them the most for the referral, not which pharmacy is the most legit. Think about that next time you take another websites word for a “recommendation”.

How many products?

This is not the be all end all of determining if a website is a scam, but most of the scam websites we come across all seem to share the characteristic of having less than 50 or 100 products in their inventory. Make note of this when you arrive at the website, and make note of the fact that it is a lot easier (and quicker) to throw up a 50 product site than a 5000 product site.

SSL Security

In the day and age of Internet commerce you would think that by now everyone passing personal information across the Internet would be doing so securely, but sadly that is just not the case. Whenever you are visiting a site and are at a page where they are requesting information such as your credit card, make absolute sure they have an SSL certificate (little lock at the bottom right hand corner of your browser) present, because if they do not you are just asking for trouble. The lack of this symbol means that your information is being sent over the Internet in plain text, and anyone (including your ISP) could read it without trouble. Is it really worth the risk?

Also be careful about calling in to place your order, because most call centers (especially those that are outsourced) will place the order over the exact same website you would use online (secure or not), so if you think you are more secure over the phone that is not the case. In fact, we prefer to use the Internet ourselves since you never really know who the person on the other end of the line is and what they are doing with your information after you hang up.

Tracking Information for Orders

Do the websites provide tracking numbers for their orders? Most do, but there have been a few we came across lately that were very suspicious about how they do their business. They will provide you with a tracking number, but the only way you can track the order is through their own website. They usually provide a number of falsified reasons as to why this may be, but that is beside the point. The goal of these websites are to provide you with “hope” that the order is actually in transit on the way to you. In the mean time they are waiting Visa/Mastercard to pay them the funds (there is sometimes up to a month delay from the day you pay with your credit card till the day the website owner receives their funds). Once these funds have been received they simply disappear. Of course, maybe they will put extended shipping times like 5-6 weeks to give them a little more time, but whatever the case make sure that whichever company you deal with will give you a tracking number for a service you can actually track yourself (FedEx, DHL, USPS, etc).

No charges at all

This actually happened to a few of our customers and so we decided to update this page with the information. Believe it or not, getting a merchant account (the ability to process MasterCard and Visa) is not an easy task, even for a legitimate website. Just having one is not a basis for legitimacy, but it’s a start. For those fraudulent websites that are either too lazy or incapable of acquiring such an account, they will just throw up a website and “pretend” to charge you for the order. They will then save all your credit card details (and those of a few thousands other people) to be sold/used at a later date for some other types of fraud. After you place an order with any new company online, give your bank a call 2-3 days later and see if it was charged. If it has not been charged, you may want to call the company and find out why. Some companies may just charge you when the order is about to be shipped so it is not an immediate cause for alarm, but then again, you never know unless you ask.

Subscription Fees

Probably one of the most common questions asked when people call in are “Do I pay any subscription fees to join your service?” There are quite a few sites selling subscriptions to their “service” that would allow potential customers to view lists of “legitimate” pharmacies carrying hard to find products that have been “fully verified”. So we signed up to one of these websites to see just what they would offer (after all it was only $25), and all they provided was a list of websites, nothing more, nothing less. So the next step was to verify these websites against our list of SCAM resistant methods and let’s just say we were not surprised when almost all of them failed one criteria or the other, especially the criteria of them all being affiliate related. One thing we were surprised with was the recurring monthly charge even after we cancelled the service. In fact, we had to cancel the card before those charges ended up stopping, so needless to say use these services at your own risk.
Internet Scams a thing of the past?

Not anytime soon. It seems no matter how many times these pharmacies are shut down; they just keep popping up again and again under different names with more and more ways to take your hard-earned money. As long as it remains profitable for them to do so, they will always be there. Knowing this is the first step in protecting yourself. The next step is to have the latest tools and knowledge to weed through the good from the bad, and that is what we are here to help you do. We will update this page frequently with more ways to protect yourself online so be sure to bookmark us and check back later.

From all the staff at PharmacyEscrow.com, we wish you a happy (and safe!) shopping trip.

Many Americans lost their jobs in the past months, who lost their health insurance as well. Health is a main concern of most households. But since the economic is getting tough, many do not have sufficient funds to maintain healthcare. Most of them may turn to online pharmacies because medical care and prescription medications can be prohibitively expensive. Many internet pharmacies sell prescription drugs only with a prescription, some do not require a pre-written prescription. Because in some countries prescriptions are really not required. Of those which do not require prescriptions, some do ask the customer to fill in a health questionnaire with their order. Some costumers order drugs from such pharmacies to avoid the inconvenience and cost of visiting a doctor or to get medications which their doctor were unwilling to prescribe.

To save money, millions of uninsured and underinsured U.S. consumers purchase drugs from online pharmacies in Canada, India, the UK and other countries and receive their purchases by mail. In the United States, there has been a push to legalize importation of medications from other countries. Those countries who are offering cheap or affordable drugs like Canada, India, Pakistan and Mexico. Online pharmacies can provide up to three months supply of drug for the same price as a single month compared to drugstores on high streets. The idea of getting as much amount of supply as they want with one prescription only versus going back to the doctor many times just to avail medication is very practical and economical.

Ordering drugs online not just saves you a lot of money but also avoiding possible hassles of going to the drugstores or traveling to the nearby countries’ pharmacies. Some medical practitioners commented that pharmacies offering medication without prescription and doctor consent are sometimes fraudulent. It has been a trend to buy online, the issue with fraud is now not after the access to legality but the awareness itself. Drugs available online are often produced by well-known manufacturers and like other drugs found in local pharmacies - are FDA approved. There are many online pharmacies across the net, the choice is yours.

There are hundreds of websites that act like online pharmacies by selling prescription medications over the internet. More and more online pharmacies are popping up all over the internet each day. With the high number of websites selling medications on the internet you might have a hard time trying to determine whether online pharmacies are legit and which should be avoided. You can put yourself at a major risk by purchasing medications from a illegitimate website. There are a number of safety tips that you should remember when you go to purchase prescription medications over the internet.

Tip #1 – Make sure you never do anything illegal. It is important to make sure you do not purchase prescription medications in a way that could be deemed illegal. Make sure you only purchasing medications from legal legit websites. It is possible to purchase the wrong medication over the internet when you think you’re getting a specific drug. You can also purchase a contaminated drug. You could actually lose your money altogether. Be sure to be extremely careful when purchasing medications over the internet.

Tip #2 – You can put yourself at many health risks by taking the wrong amount of a specific type of medication. You can put yourself in grave danger by purchasing prescription medications online and then taking too much of a particular medication. When purchasing medication over the internet, you need to ensure that you purchase the right medication. Make sure that you receive the right drug and you only take the medication as directed.

Tip #3 – It can be extremely dangerous to take medications without a prescription. Taking any prescription medication without a prescription can be extremely dangerous. You could end up suffering from a drug interaction. The drug could have some type of side effect that you are not aware of. Make sure you only take medications that have been prescribed by a doctor.

Tip #4 –Whenever you visit an online pharmacy’s website, make sure that the pharmacy’s physical address is listened on the website. The pharmacy’s address should be listed on the company’s website and it should be located somewhere in the United States. You should also look for a phone number on their website as well. If this information is not listed then you shouldn’t purchase anything from that particular internet pharmacy.

Tip #5 – When purchasing medications over the internet it is a good idea to avoid foreign retailers as much as possible. It can actually be illegal to purchase drugs from foreign websites and doing so can put you at a high risk. Most of the time the scammers are located in foreign countries so it is best so avoid foreign retailers altogether.

Tip #6 – It is a good idea to consult with your doctor before you purchase medications over the internet. You should talk with a doctor before you take any medication. More than likely you do not know the risks of taking these medications yourself. A doctor will be able to describe the risks to you. You also do not know the bad interactions that could occur from taking these medications with others. Be sure to talk with a doctor to get you’re a prescription and then purchasing the prescription medication over the internet.

Tip #7 – Always be cautious of websites and advertisements that sound too good to be true. Most of the time ads that are too good to be true are probably scams. Always be extremely careful when you see an ad that sounds like it is too good to be true.