Monday, November 19, 2007

[anherbal.com] XtraSize / Elite Herbal Supplements Will Kill You!

I keep getting spam which abuses Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Usually a url just like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl:anherbal&btnI=I=Im+Feeling+Lucky

The goal is to rank the domain up high enough that it is automatically the first choice for Google, a domain which is whitelisted and very commonly accepted by most email domains.

It is of course yet another feeble, desperate attempt to "hit inbox" (as the spammers call it) of as many people as possible, especially those who never wanted it in the first place.

If you remove the segment at the end which wants to include the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you can see that they even tried monitoring its page rank for a few days, and those results are part of the urls which are referenced by that search.

Fortunately in this case it is redirecting to a domain (anherbal.com) which has already stopped being hosted. And possibly is automatically redirecting you here. :) (It's happened before.)

The sad truth is: some people out there get suckered into this scam and assume that they will be able to enlarge their penises. Not only do they NOT end up with the desired results, there is significant evidence that these "herbal supplements", spammed en masse on behalf of "Elite Herbal" and "ManXL", can lead to death, particularly for members of their target audience (males aged 40 and up who experience erectile dysfunction.) Many men at that age experience blood pressure issues, making the taking of these so-called "supplements" an extremely dangerous proposition.

This is nothing new, of course. Spammers have been promoting lethal fake pharmacies for years now. It's just surprising the lengths that they will go to to reach people who rather obviously have absolutely no interest in their "products."

They can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned.

SiL / IKS / concerned citizen

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://americasgreatest.googlepages.com/

The worst spammer and sprint or china do nothing!

IKillSpammerz said...

You are correct.

In all fairness: China (that's pretty broad of you) actually does do something, it just takes a lot of persistence and multiple people reporting it. The presence of so many links on an abused site is unfortunately not evidence enough of it. China specifically needs to know why the site is considered to be "illegal." Saying that it's being spammed merely informs them that it's annoying. If you do report this to a Chinese registrar, you should make sure to include that these sites are operating illegally by lying about their so-called "security" (they offer none) and in the facts that their claims of the products' effects are completely false. They claim to have the support of several groups which wholeheartedly disavow any such support. All of that is illegal and fraudulent behavior.

Chinese registrars will eventually take action. But you have to be very specific, and have a lot of patience. Meanwhile these criminals continue to profit...

SiL / IKS

Anonymous said...

I think google must filter this searches in order to avoid more scams

IKillSpammerz said...

> I think google must filter this searches in order to avoid more scams

More to the point: They should make it much more obvious where to report this blatant page ranking manipulation.

I was told at one point that there was a form to report this, but for the life of me I have never been able to find it.

It's a valid point. It abuses Google's "I'm feeling lucky" functionality, essentially hijacking it as a redirection function to get past email filters.

SiL

Anonymous said...

Amazing - despite all the evidence of fraud and criminal abuse, anherbal.com is still up and running. How many companies are knowingly allowing and supporting these criminals? Can they explain why they should not be indicted for aiding and abetting a crime?

First there is Google, whose free Blogspot offering provides thousands (no exaggeration) of redirections despite it being a blatant breach of their terms of service. Google, step up to the podium and accept the House of Shame award.

Next, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, we find Yahoo! - whose Geocities free hosting service is likewise a spammer's haven. Redirections to anherbal.com have been seen there, and reported from Knujon and CastleCops. Google and Yahoo! can fight over the award, but wait, there are more!

Look at that shady, unresponsive registrar, Xin Net, who have such an abysmal record of acting on complaints. They allow both the site name and its name servers to be resolved on the Internet by accepting their registrations from obvious criminals. How many times have they been asked to close this site down? China's registrar Xin Net brings international shame on the People's Republic of China. Xin Net - you are a disgrace.

Of course, the toothless, hairless, gutless bunch of seat warming dipsticks who call themselve ICANN (while the rest of the world more rightly calls them ICAN'T) has to share the top prize. They provide the accreditation to all registrars, so they have put their seal of approval on Xin Net. It's a seal that surely comes on the back of every packet of breakfast cereal, for what it is worth. ICANN you are a laughing stock and it's about time your whole organization was replaced with competent humans.

Not to be outdone, Korea's Hananet, hiding in the back row, needs to take the stage in front of the glaring spotlight. Were it not for Hananet's steadfast refusal to block access to anherbal.com's IP address, this criminal scam would not be the flourishing success it is today.

A round of muffled applause, please. What? Booing and hissing? Please!

References for the backing evidence that helped the judges choose these reluctant and embarrassed winners -

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/anherbal.com
http://www.spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Geocities_Spam
http://www.spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Geocities
http://www.spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Blogspot

and of course, a Google or Yahoo! search on anherbal.com turns up more toads under the stones.

Anonymous said...

I've ordered it but it doesn't work! How can I get my money back??

IKillSpammerz said...

Well: they're spammers. So usually that means a bit of effort is required on your end.

If you ordered with a credit card, get them to do a charge-back:

http://www.consumerhelp.ie/chargeback

If you ordered with PayPal, report the transaction to their customer support.

SiL