There are indeed a lot of online pharmacies that are authorized to dispense or sell prescription medications to consumers. Apart from the online pharmacies that are noted to operate legally, rogue Internet drugstores also proliferate the World Wide Web. These are termed rouge pharmacies for these sites do not have license to distribute prescription medications to online consumers.
Consumers can easily determine if a certain online pharmacy is legal or not. One of the notable differences is that rogue online pharmacies allow consumers to buy drugs without prescription. Purchasing or ordering medications without the proper prescriptions is illegal in the United States. Instead of requiring prescriptions, rogue Internet pharmacies only feature online questionnaires as basis for their drug recommendations. This process may be harmful to consumers' health, for questionnaires cannot really fully determine one's health condition.
As such, the United States' Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is firm on its warning that consumers should not be duped or be fooled with the tricky promised benefits of illegally operated online pharmacies. Despite the strict program on regulating the establishment of websites that offer pharmaceutical services, there are a still a handful of illegal online pharmacies on the Internet today.
Aside from operating illegally, below is a list of the other notable reasons why one should avoid availing the services of rogue online pharmacies:
1. Majority of rogue online pharmacies do not protect the information (whether these are personal or financial data) they acquire from consumers. With this, there is a possibility that the information these sites acquire from their clients are passed on to third party entities for spamming purposes.
2. Since rogue online pharmacies only require consumers to answer questionnaires as replacement to prescriptions, the medications these sites recommend are not 100 percent efficient or effective to treat the health conditions of the consumers.
3. Most of the time, the featured low prices of rogue websites are not exactly what the consumers are bound to pay once they order or purchase their medications. Additional fees are commonly added to these sites' price offerings. These add-on fees may be declared as medical fees, order fees, account set-up fees, or shipping fees. Also, the low price offerings of rogue online pharmacies frequently change. Exaggeratedly low prices of medications are just promotional means of these sites to lure consumers on availing their services.
4. Illegally operated online pharmacies do not provide complete contact details on their sites. With this, consumers will surely find it difficult to contact the website they have chosen if ever problems occur. Consumers should remember that legitimate Internet pharmacies should have an existing address and a telephone number posted on their sites. Contact information of websites is important as this makes it easier for consumers to deliver their complaints, questions, or queries regarding the services of the website.
