eNom to Begin Screening Bogus Drug Sales

Joe Menn writes in The Financial Times:

In a victory for the fight against criminal networks distributing counterfeit and adulterated drugs over the internet, the world’s second-biggest seller of website addresses is to begin screening customers for unapproved drug sales.

Under pressure from security professionals, the internet governance group ICANN and the White House, the domain-name seller eNom last week quietly retained LegitScript, a company that vets internet pharmaceutical concerns to make sure they are licensed to do business in the US.

While GoDaddy, the world’s biggest seller of domain names, and other registrars have knocked thousands of rogue pharmacies offline, until now eNom, owned by Demand Media of Santa Monica, had refused to act without a court order or law-enforcement directive.

The changed approach was disclosed in an amended securities filing for Demand Media’s planned initial public stock offering. The filing says LegitScript will assist eNom “in identifying customers who are violating our terms of service by operating online pharmacies in violation of US state or federal law”.

eNom came under fire in June, when security research concern KnujOn accused it of handling registrations for 4,000 bogus pharmacies.

More here.