Bing announced today that it will start warning searchers before visiting unsafe online pharmacies selling counterfeit medication.

Before visiting one of these online pharmacies, a warning will now appear advising the searcher to go back and choose another result.

The online pharmacies being targeted are those that have been cited by the FDA as “a fake online pharmacy engaged in illegal activity, such as offering potentially dangerous, unapproved and misbranded prescription drugs to U.S. consumers.”

The FDA maintains a regularly updated list of such sites here.

These are the same measures being used against warning searchers from visiting sites that are suspected to contain malware.

In each instance Bing will not ultimately prevent the searcher from visiting the site if that’s what they want to do. The company wants to provide enough information for the searcher to make an informed decision.

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