Main Subject - Internet and Businesses Online

It is a shame that we waste so much of our time on the Net dealing with spammers. Many forums become the target of spam robots (bots) that find a forum to attack and then start registering users with t

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

he intent of posting spam to the user's account. Once they are registered users, they post spam which contains links that point to their website. This is to create a high link count and cause the site

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

o rank high with the search engines.

As with all other aspects of the Internet, the forums are subject to receiving spam and receive tons of it. If you read the forums for forum administrators, you wi

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

l see that prevention of spam is an ongoing discussion topic.

Most of the volume spammers are robots (bots) that find a forum that does not have the proper security provisions installed and then start

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

pumping out registrations and postings to the forum.

From personal experience, I established a forum with very little previous knowledge of forums. I set the options to what appeared to be logical. A

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

first, the forum did not require that a person be registered to post on the forum. This was quickly changed because of all the "drive by postings" that were posted that were usually worthless and porn

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

graphic. If a person has to register to post, the posts are usually more meaningful.

Things were fine until the bots discovered the forum and the spam postings began. The forum options were changed to

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

require that the person identify numbers and letters from a graphic during registration. This was designed to defeat robot spammers.

Wrong! They just kept coming. It now appeared that the forum was u

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

der attack from human spammers. Cant' you just see someone hunched over a keyboard in a third world country pounding out spam to the forum?

The registration option was changed to require the administr

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

tor to approve each registration. This generated a message to my forum mailbox for each bot registration. This amounted to 30 -40 attempted registrations per day.

After exhausting my knowledge on the

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

roblem, I built a web page at the forum address explaining that until further notice, the forum was suspended due to spam.

I looked for help and then posted a project on rentacoder.com. After receivin

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

g several bids, the project was awarded to a coder from England with a great performance rating.

He informed me that phpBB is so well known that the spammers can determine which graphic is being displ

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

yed at registration so the bot can answer the challenge question correctly. (So much for the visual recognition).

He installed a modification (also called mod or hack) to phpBB that will present the p

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

rson (or bot) who is registering with various questions that only a human can read and answer. The forum administrator can change the questions and answers so the questions are not common on all phpBB

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

sites.

Another feature he installed is the phpBB toolkit. This is a very handy tool for administering forum users. It facilitated the mass deletion of the many spam users that had already registered.

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

He also advised me to change the registration option so the forum sends a confirmation email to each new registration requiring a response before the account is activated. Spammers will not generally u

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

e valid email addresses thus the registration will fail.

The textual confirmation challenge modification has an option to send an email to the administrator for each registration failure. I enjoy watc

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

hing these post in my forum mailbox knowing that the bots are being kept from registering on the forum.

With these options, the forum administrators are winning the spam wars. However, hold your breat

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

since we know that the spammers will undoubtedly find a way around these methods, and we will have to "plug the dike" somewhere else.

In summary, my advice is do extensive research about forums befor

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

you establish one and hire a talented and experienced forum administrator to help you set up the forum. Whatever it costs, it will be money well spent.

Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Main Subject - Dealing with Forum SPAM

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