ImageShack serves dire warnings to victims of pharmaceutical spams

ImageShack discovered that they were being used by fake pharmacy scammers to host images for their crappy websites and spam. So ImageShack now serves this warning image for all the pharma referrers they can find.

Imageshack Swaps Spam Pages for Scam Alerts

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MORE: Action • Business • petard • pharma • Technology

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tmccartney

That’s fascinating, given that one of their pages today redirected me to one of those fake spyware-scanning sites – you know, the kind that you pretty much have to close all your browser windows in Task Manager to get rid of. Perhaps they need to clean their own house in addition to being pharma cops.
- firebush69
  
  Dude- I think that’s a browser hijacker. I have had this happen on other sites. You will need to use a different browser for a while. You should uninstall the browser in which the initial error occurred. You should boot into safe mode, do some stuff, and hope for the best.
  
  I really, really hope you are not a pharma concern troll. Also, I am looking at you, Sork. You sound really dumb.
  - Anonymous
    
    Actually I’m with Sork here; that image looks less legit than the Pharma sites.
    
    Not saying it isn’t legit, just that it’s amateur as hell – as in, done by a blindfolded toddler amateur.
  - Sork
    
    I sound dumb? Could you explain why you chose to attack me?
    
    Any URL shortened link is a major hazard for being blindly redirected to malware. Since I somewhat trust my browser’s safety, and apparently needed to prove a point, I tried to go to the announced URL’s, and got stuck with a timeout waiting for “spamtrackers.eu”. If this is a legitimate spam awareness site then why not use the legitimate URL, and a legitimate image? This looks no more authentic than the wavy pill images some spams attach. The next time some pillscamer will attach the same picture with bit.ly/stopscamsnow and it will point straight to their shop.
  - Shithead
    
    “You should boot into safe mode, do some stuff, and hope for the best.”
    
    LMAO!
    
    Best advice I ever saw.
oheso

Brill! I hope they keep it up (and other on-line service providers watch for the same kind of hijinx).
Anonymous

@tmccartney: actually, it’s more likely you already have some nastiness on your machine that led you to that site.
howaboutthisdangit

I’m sure they are only protecting themselves, but they have just earned several Brownie points with me. ++imageShack.
Sork

A picture that looks like a teenager did, and unknown bit.ly links. Sounds very legit…
Capissen

Hotlinking revenge is such an awesome form of revenge.
tmccartney

I can asssure you I’m not a pharma concern troll. (rolling eyes)
kmoser

Hmmm, I’m pretty sure I submitted this a good six months ago or more to no avail.
- Anonymous
  
  yeah about that, i get frustrated with the submissions here.
  if i make a comment/ note of a repeated post from six months ago that is less informative or I see something i submitted turn up months later, and comment my comment doesn’t get approved to be posted. i can’t help but think… ‘hmmmm’
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    What? They don’t even pick up my submissions, and I work here.
Art Carnage

I heard they were out of avail six months ago.
cory

Well good, but I hope they don’t accidentally do this to a legitimate business. Libel suit.

Even a shady business, if it will actually send you the product you ordered, might have a case against them. Not sure ImageShack is doing itself any favors here; just serve nothing at all.
- Matt J
  
  I don’t see how it’d libel, when these people are hotlinking these images. It’d be like someone cutting a clipping out of a newspaper and replacing a murderer’s name with their own, then claiming the newspaper called them a murderer.
- jungletek
  
  A legit business would actually, you know, host their images on their webserver. That they pay for.
Anonymous

I hope they did this properly, such that the server reports that the image has not changed recently.

If you do this right, the old version can stick around in the scammer’s cache, so that when he checks up on his own site, he doesn’t see that anything has changed.