Track unique IP Address

[glenh]

I have a web app that is running a photo competition. Basically any
user should be able to vote on a photo with a rating between 1 and 5.
At the end of the competition the photo with the highest average
rating wins the competition.

To make things fair we would like to restrict a user from only voting
on any one photo only once. However to encourage voting we dont want
to have to force users to register/signup. So we thought perhaps that
we could track IP Addresses as well as user ids against photos.

So I would just like to know what sort of implications may arise with
tracking IP Addresses. The obvious one that comes to mind is IP
spoofing. But Im not quite sure what happens with dynamic IP
addresses? Does this mean anyone without a shared IP address will
come on with a different IP Address? What about proxy servers?

There will obviously be other measures in place to ensure that rigging
of votes will be kept to a minimum.

I thank anyone that can help shed any light on this and if they think
this is actually viable?

[parez]

On Sep 30, 4:19*am, "Mark Rae [MVP]" <m...@markNOSPA Mrae.netwrote:

"glenh" <glenh...@hotma il.comwrote in message

news:f4******** *************** ***********@m36 g2000hse.google groups.com...

Mark, to answer your question on what other measures will be put in
place to minimize rigging. *We will track any photo that has a high
number of votes on it any particulary day. *By nature of the site
theoritically you can only vote on one photo at a time and then the
next photo is displayed (randomly) so any photo that receives a high
number of votes in any particular day shouldnt occur (Julian has made
this same suggestion). *We will also be tracking users voting of other
photos, to ensure that a particular user is not voting low 1's on
everyone else's photo. *Although this I guess is allowable it is in
the t&c's that every user should vote fairly and any person trying to
influence any particular photo can have their votes pulled.

The big point to make here is that the site is offering quite a large
prize of $100,000 (potentially based on participants). *So of course
we are wanting to ensure the safest and fairest process of voting.

The point here is that $100,000 is a huge sum of money, easily enough to
tempt a hacker.

For that sort of money, I (and many other people like me, many more than you
might imagine) could develop a piece of code which maintained the number of
votes for any particular photo just marginally ahead of the next most
popular photo, all coming from different IP addresses at random times
throughout the day. You'd never know...

This would take me, maybe, half an hour...

If this competition is already live, I'd be amazed if someone hasn't done
this already.

--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVPhttp://www.markrae.net

you could use the captcha test for automated programs..

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/custom...haControl.aspx

if this contest is not a one time thing, you could keep the
registration process short 3-5 fields
(email,password ,password,first name,last)
and also allow users only with valid emails to vote(as suggested
before by someone)

[parez]

On Sep 30, 1:11*pm, parez <psaw...@gmail. comwrote:

On Sep 30, 4:19*am, "Mark Rae [MVP]" <m...@markNOSPA Mrae.netwrote:

"glenh" <glenh...@hotma il.comwrote in message

news:f4******** *************** ***********@m36 g2000hse.google groups.com....

Mark, to answer your question on what other measures will be put in
place to minimize rigging. *We will track any photo that has a high
number of votes on it any particulary day. *By nature of the site
theoritically you can only vote on one photo at a time and then the
next photo is displayed (randomly) so any photo that receives a high
number of votes in any particular day shouldnt occur (Julian has made
this same suggestion). *We will also be tracking users voting of other
photos, to ensure that a particular user is not voting low 1's on
everyone else's photo. *Although this I guess is allowable it is in
the t&c's that every user should vote fairly and any person trying to
influence any particular photo can have their votes pulled.

The big point to make here is that the site is offering quite a large
prize of $100,000 (potentially based on participants). *So of course
we are wanting to ensure the safest and fairest process of voting.

The point here is that $100,000 is a huge sum of money, easily enough to
tempt a hacker.

For that sort of money, I (and many other people like me, many more than you
might imagine) could develop a piece of code which maintained the number of
votes for any particular photo just marginally ahead of the next most
popular photo, all coming from different IP addresses at random times
throughout the day. You'd never know...

This would take me, maybe, half an hour...

If this competition is already live, I'd be amazed if someone hasn't done
this already.

--
Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVPhttp://www.markrae.net

you could use the captcha test for automated programs..

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/custom...haControl.aspx

if this contest is not a *one time *thing, you could keep the
registration process short 3-5 fields
(email,password ,password,first name,last)
and also allow users only with valid emails to vote(as suggested
before by someone)

you could also try flash cookies.they will be defnitely be better than
regular cookies..