The role of Internet as an unregulated medicine market is the main reasons behind this phenomenon, especially the effectiveness of "spam" as a tool for advertising and promoting these products.
[3] If on the one side the Internet created new opportunities for consumers, on the other it also represents a new powerful instrument that organized criminals could exploit to conduct their illicit businesses.
For what concerns the retail level, counterfeiters deceive consumers both with low prices and by sending a constant stream of spam messages to their e-mail inboxes.
[8] For them, criminals are harsh unscrupulous competitors who advertise fake drugs and put at risk the reputation of all online pharmacies which operate honestly.
They sell counterfeit pharmaceuticals through ad hoc designed websites which pretend authenticity and often contain features which aim to imitate legitimate ones.
The impact of illicit e-pharmacies should not be underestimated: sewage epidemiology showed that >60% of the consumed sildenafil in the Netherlands was obtained from illegal sources.
On the other side, through fake e-pharmacies cyber criminals do not really sell medicines, but only use them as baits to defraud online buyers, as in the case of ID theft and credit card cloning.
such as lower prices and anonymity, counterfeiters also use a variety of deceiving methods that are based on the fact that the potential buyers will never have the possibility to verify the authenticity of what is presented in the fake website.
In 2011 Pangea IV was the largest operation of its kind, involving 165 agencies and leading to the seizure of 2.4 million illicit and counterfeit pills originating from 43 countries; the shutting down of 13,500 websites and the inspection of 45,000 packages.
Due to the almost unlimited possibilities offered by cyberspace, purchasing pharmaceuticals over the Internet is easy while, on the contrary, tracing the various phases within the distribution chain can be difficult.
Another interesting element to be analyzed is the role of spamming, to present how criminals are able to increase the possibility of success of their deceiving actions by reaching a greater number of potential victims and advertise their products.
This is a significant element to take into consideration, as attempts to regulate contents of e-mail messages risk to contribute undermining the freedom of speech instead of efficiently fighting the phenomenon of spamming.
[14] As it is a cheap and anonymous way to promote products on the Internet and since it also allows reaching a large number of people all over the world, spamming represents a very powerful advertising instrument.
The various "joint actions" put in place are an important sign of the determination of the private sector to stop the misuse of the Internet for illegal purposes, nevertheless there are thousand of other smaller companies dealing with spamming on a daily basis that are unable to dispose of such amount of technological, financial and human resources to get engaged in such a fight.