Spam a Nightmare for Pfizer

Drug maker Pfizer is targeting spam pitching knock-offs of its popular male potency pill in the Netherlands. All but about 3% of the pills sold via spam email are actually counterfeit. To add insult to injury, a survey indicated that nearly half of people thought Pfizer was actually behind the email campaigns.

Pfizer's most popular product is notorious for having its name creatively misspelled by spammers in an effort to evade spam mail filter applications.

In response, Pfizer has launched radio advertisements attempting to inform the public about the imitation medication. In the ads they claim that the pills may be a threat to public safety due to a lack of standards and regulation in their production.

Some pills may contain the correct active ingredient, while others don't contain any actual medication. It is unclear what percentage of the email messages were actually pitching legitimate generic versions of the pills. One way or the other, purchasing drugs from spammers would seem ill-advised at best.

Drug manufacturers aren't the only companies hit by illegitimate products sold via junk messages. Software manufacturers have long been plagued by promotions for pirated software being sent to people's inboxes.

Again, many recipients of the messages thought the knock-off products were actually being promoted by the real software author. In some cases, anti-spam products were being sold, causing public relation issues for the manufacturers.

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