Web of Trust (WOT) and Online Pharmacies: PharmacyChecker.com Provides Clarity
Over the past few years we’ve found that, despite many positive ratings from actual consumers, the most reputable and safe international online pharmacies are unfairly given low ratings on WOT. As an online community of people who are supposed to rate websites on their trustworthiness, this is clearly problematic. Last week we posted an article about online pharmacies as a forum discussion on WOT – MyWot.com – to share our analysis of why the best international online pharmacies are wrongly receiving poor reputations. It should be recognized that many dangerous online pharmacies, foreign and domestic, are appropriately rated poorly on WOT, but, as described below, that doesn’t excuse rating good websites as bad.
In summary, a handful of WOT’s “Platinum” raters (those that have provided more than 10,000 ratings) mostly look to the online pharmacy evaluations of LegitScript.com and the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, both aligned with the interests of big pharmaceutical companies. By doing so, WOT users are serving the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical and U.S. pharmacy industries by giving a low rating to trustworthy and safe online pharmacies. This is wrong and hurts consumers.
Because WOT ratings are used to determine exposure on other sites, unwarranted low ratings of safe and affordable non-U.S. online pharmacies, which are actually trustworthy, can harm American consumers who can’t afford drug prices. Sadly, these low ratings may cause them to forgo needed medication by wrongly believing an affordable online pharmacy is dangerous and untrustworthy when in fact it is very safe and trustworthy.
Since we posted the article as a forum there has been mostly positive feedback (except about the length of the forum) and a frank discussion about online pharmacies, access to medication and Web of Trust.
