Faced with high prices or shortages, ordering medications on the web has become a tempting reflex. However, an invisible and fearsomely effective trap is spreading in France, threatening both your health and your wallet.
It has become a reflex for many: given the prices charged in pharmacies, many consumers turn to websites to buy their medicines. The most popular? Products against erectile dysfunction like Viagra or Cialis, “trendy” antidiabetic products like Ozempic or Wegovy, but also steroids, fertility hormones and even certain antibiotics. Medicines for which a prescription is necessary… except on certain sites.
Yes, for two years, a new scam has exploded in France. When you type the name of your treatment into Google, the sites offered appear impeccable. In one click, you arrive on a carefully designed platform, displaying reassuring security logos, glowing customer reviews and a standard pharmacy catalog, but with discounted prices. Everything is designed so that you feel completely confident when taking out your bank card. However, you have just set foot in a fake virtual pharmacy, entirely generated by cybercriminals.
The problem with these fake online pharmacies is that they threaten your wallet, your privacy, and your health: the sites sell you medicines “counterfeit, contaminated or completely falsified” and therefore potentially dangerous, “while seeking to steal personal, medical or banking data”alerts the Avast antivirus software.
These fake sites play on several elements: the urgency in the face of certain drug shortages, since many offer deliveries within 24 hours; but also the confidentiality sought by certain customers, who would not dare to ask their local pharmacist for Viagra or Ozempic; and of course the unbeatable price compared to physical and regulated businesses.
Since 2024, Avast claims to have blocked no less than 7,173 fraudulent sites of this type, and to have even identified “a vast, coordinated criminal network that runs over 5,000 pharmacy-related domains, all controlled by the same operators.” This scam is nicknamed “PharmaFraud” and France is one of the most targeted countries, along with Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Canada, Austria, Serbia and Spain. Moreover, on a global scale, the phenomenon is far from being anecdotal: according to a study by the American National Association of Pharmacists, 95% of websites offering prescription drugs online operate illegally.
As a reminder, in France, it is strictly prohibited to sell medicines subject to compulsory medical prescription on the Internet. If a site offers Viagra or Ozempic without a prescription, it must be an illegal site or a scam. Furthermore, the website of the National Order of Pharmacists lists the only pharmacies authorized to sell online. Faced with this rapidly expanding scourge, only one golden rule prevails: on the Internet more than elsewhere, vigilance remains your best prescription.
