Glavmed responds - re: my Open Letter.

Welcome Glavmed affiliates who are linking here directly from the Glavmed site. :)

For a very brief period of time yesterday (Feb. 4th, 2009) the following claims were posted on many pages of the glavmed portal site, and it makes it clear that they are seeing some negative attention as a result of my open letter:

We've received a few links from our partners, containing an open letter. This letter was published at http://ikillspammers.blogspot.com/2009/02/glavmed-open-letter-to-law-enforcement.html. This is far from the last time, when apparently our business rivals try to defame our partnership programme. But this is the first time, when they appeal to The FTC, The FDA and other law organisations.

We, Glavmed, want to make a statement, that all the allegations of this letter are absolutely false and incorrect. They denigrate the honour, dignity and business reputation of our company.

We'd like to answer this open letter item by item:

1.Glavmed don't sell, have never sold and will never sell any pills. Glavmed are CEO partnership programme, which run a network of online-shops. Its main task is accepting of buyers' order und data. We have a few commission contracts with well-known, absolutely licensed drug stores. We transfer this order to them for its execution. Glavmed's task is attracting of new customers and transferring their orders to these drug stores. After receiving the commission from these drug stores we share it with our partners. We don't sell pills. That makes a great difference.

2.Glavmed have clear rules against spam and viral spreaders. We've never accepted such traffic. All such accounts have been instantly banned or cancelled. It's very easy to check. Just register and try to spread spam!

3.Glavmed are really well-known long existing partnership programme. Unfortunately we have some problems. The schemes and designs of our sites are being constantly copied and stolen. A lot of our dishonest business rivals give their sites to be ours, copying everything - graphic designs, file names and product descriptions.

4.Our rivals allege that our drug stores' products have low quality. This is totally lie and defamation. We can show hundreds of feedbacks, proving high quality of our products. We also have independent test results. They prove that our products are being produced by indinan laboratories and up to claimed quality.

Unfortunately we can foresee the further organized pressure against our partnership programme, because normal business competition can't be provided by them. We really take care of our partners and our customers.

This message was removed sometime between yesterday and today. It is unclear why, although I would guess that they didn't want their own affiliates reading my posting. I and other researchers have also noticed that they are now blocking very specific IP addresses from viewing the Glavmed website.

A couple of obvious corrections need to be made right off the bat:

a) The letter was not written to you, Glavmed representatives. It was written to law and drug enforcement agencies, as well as the media who has been researching this.

b) I am absolutely not a "business rival".

c) I am not the only one who has been researching your organization. My letter is a an account of the known, researched, verifiable facts regarding the scourge of unwanted Canadian Pharmacy websites. If I were trying to defame you, I wouldn't have nearly as much factual evidence in my letter.

So in response, I'll counter their bogus response point by point.

1. Glavmed claims on their front page (and I'm of course not altering their horrendous spelling and grammatical mistakes):

GlavMed is a BEST way to convert your pharmacy traffic into real money. Forget about miserable sums you're getting sending your visitors to PPC pharmacy results.

You're loosing at least half of YOUR money converting traffic like this. GlavMed offers you a possibility to eliminate any agents and sell most popular pharmacy products directly. It means 30-40% revenue share. features & benefits

Note: sell most popular pharmacy products directly. Which is it? Are they selling them or not?

Whether they sell the drugs themselves or not is ultimately irrelevant. They are part of a long chain that gets illegally-produced FAKE and harmful versions of these products into the hands of unwitting members of the public. There is copious amounts of evidence to support this, and they know it.

Glavmed is an affiliate program. They get their affiliates (aka: spammers) to promote (aka: spam) the websites (hosted via rampant viral PC infections) to sell fake drugs to unwitting victim customers. Who do they send that order data to? They don't say. But they know who that is, and they know that they are taking these orders without any consultation with any pharmacist. They also do all of this with absolutely ZERO security or encryption, so you can imagine how they're treating the rest of your personal data.

2. Sure, they state on their website that they don't allow spamming, but as I mentioned: they removed any of the postings which made it clear that very actve spammers are indeed a part of their program. Nowhere do we find ANY postings within their forum about any actual action taken against spammers. Literally everyone with an email address will know that Canadian Pharmacy is THE most spammed property on the Internet today, and has been for three years and counting. If they don't allow spammers, why is it still the most commonly found spam in the world today? You can have rules all you like. If you're not enforcing them: what does it matter?

As an aside, I and many other individuals have been complaining to Glavmed under numerous identities starting in May of 2008. I have personally sent, using numerous of my accounts, at least 25 very detailed complaints regarding spam messages I have received between May 2008 and January 2009. Guess how many responses I've gotten? Guess how much "action" I've seen on behalf of Glavmed, or anyone else claiming to represent this operation? ZERO! Guess where their abuse-reporting pages are on their site? THEY DON'T HAVE ANY!

This claim is utterly false. They take zero action regarding their KNOWN spamming affiliates, and they never will.

3. If Glavmed has been aware all this time that so-called third parties were ripping off their site designs, functionality and everything else: why haven't they drastically changed their entire design, branding, etc., or made ANY public statement regarding any of this? Why did they wait until someone like me exposes the whole setup for the obviously fraudulent operation that it is? This is an outright lie.

4. Again I will link to actual evidence (source), on behalf of a reputable company -- Ironport -- who placed orders from one of these sites, and gave the pills they received to a lab for analysis:

False Drugs Purchased

IronPort researchers followed the trail they uncovered and ordered sample pills from a pharmacy source in India. They then had an independent lab analyze the contents. The pills IronPort ordered contained sugar and some inert filler, Bhandari said.

A second test sampling from another online pharmacy purchase contained high metal content. The substances could be very harmful to unsuspecting consumers, he said.

IronPort-sponsored pharmacological testing revealed that two-thirds of the shipments contained the active ingredient but were not the correct dosage, while the others were placebos. As a result, consumers take a significant risk of ingesting an uncontrolled substance from overseas distributors, according to IronPort.

So in light of this report: I don't believe a single word Glavmed says, and I don't think anyone else should either.

Keep in mind: this is only one such report. There are others.

I notice that they completely ignore any mention of concern over the rampant illegal spamming which continues on behalf of Canadian Pharmacy, nor do they even broach the subject that as recently as October 2008 their site templates still contained bogus "sponsorship logos" on behalf of the Better Business Bureau, Verified By Visa, and Pharma Checker, nor do they mention that they were making very public statements that they knew full well that all of these logos were not being used appropriately.

The Spamtrackers wiki entry for Glavmed contains a screenshot of the Glavmed sites page dating from July 2008 which shows the Canadian Pharmacy layout still featuring the bogus sponsor logos. (source.)

In addition: this howler of a claim:

"We can show hundreds of feedbacks, proving high quality of our products. We also have independent test results. They prove that our products are being produced by indinan laboratories and up to claimed quality."

Their claim that they have all kinds of feedback saying how great they are is meaningless.

Which "indinan laboratories"? Which "independent test results"? On behalf of whom? Published where, exactly?

Of course they will never say.

What about third-party, verified claims and lab tests that your products are genuine? What about third-party reports that your servers actually are secure? If I'm selling you a car and you ask me for verification that the car is in road-ready shape and is safe to drive, I can't just start typing you a recommendation myself. I would need a third party inspector to verify that my claims that this vehicle was safe were in fact true. Glavmed doesn't do this, nor have they ever.

"We really take care of our partners and our customers."

Really? I know for a fact that numerous of your customers would very much beg to differ.

Clearly my letter has hit a nerve. As usual, their response, as with many obvious spam operations, is more concerned with damage to their profits than anything to do with public safety, or the security of your personal data.

Glavmed's claims are theirs alone, verifiable by nobody, and easily countered point by point as being verifiably false.

I stand behind every word of my posting. This is not defamation. Again: I am only one individual, but my posting links to research performed by literally dozens of others, from a very wide variety of technical, medical, security and other backgrounds.

Use your own judgement: Glavmed, and the entire operation they support, are liars and part of a criminal operation. The proof isn't just in my open letter. It's all over the place.

SiL / IKS / concerned citizen