In my last post, there was a suggestion that we should figure out a way to identify people who are attempting to caste fake votes and just throw them out. Debarring voters from the same IP is not a sensible thing to do, as many genuine people accessing the site behind their corporate firewalls, would log the same IP. Also, it is just not worth chasing people who are busy creating fake IDs. Though these users often don’t realize, that in their passion to cast fake votes, they forget to remove the telltale signatures left behind. So in a matter of few minutes, the system logs voters like Dina, Dina1, & Dina2 sequentially on the voter list However it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth, as we go through some routine checks, and discover people using the lesser known email ‘alias’ features to caste fake votes. For the uninitiated, Gmail has a very useful feature where you can create a mail alias very easily. This was actually designed to handle spam better. So .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is same as [email protected], or any such combination. The feature was introduced by Gmail to help consumers fight spam by submitting alias IDs on web-forms. You can read more about this feature here http://tinyurl.com/gmailalias As you are aware technology can be put to both good use and bad. Some smart applicants on GDC chose the latter and decided to register multiple votes, themselves, using aliases. Since it does not take much effort, all you got to do is log in, create a new gmail ID, continue casting votes using aliases, before signing off for the night. Oh - these not so smart ones! You tell me what we should do with these people. I think, I already have your answer. Cheers for the TGDC team, After all technology does have a way to differentiate between the good and not-so-good :o) It’s a personal choice to opt from “online fun”, or, “on the way fun”. We are getting butterflies in the stomach by the hour! :o) Well done guys, you people are doing some wonderful analysis of the huge number of votes that are getting logged. I certainly didn’t know about email ‘alias’ feature. Now we have some food for thoughts for you. As you know most of the people have more than 1 email id (everyone at least have 2 mail ids, 1 personal and 1 official). If with good intentions of helping me my friend casts vote from both his id’s, what will you consider it? It is definitely not a fake id and intentions are also good. Also, people will definitely have multiple friends with common names so some names will get repeated in voters list. Last but not the least, since now everyone knows about the alias feature, what if someone decides to spoil a particular profile and start sending fake vote emails to that profile using this feature? How do you decide what needs to be done. You definitely don’t want an innocent person to get penalized for somebody else’s bad intentions. I guess the TGDC team has got a huge challenge in their hands to make sure that this contest remain fair and deserving people with good intentions do move forward. Cheers Hi Guys, We did send an email to you at GD Support, without realising that the same topic is being discussed here. Its difficult, but there are some ways to determine the sure-sure-fraud cases. I am not a computer science engineer, so wouldn’t know of how we verify IP addresses, etc, but I am sure even daily votes statistics will help us determine the fraud cases e.g. look at the number of votes received by participants on a daily basis…. if someone has the count of daily votes reading 0,1, 130odd, 450, 650, etc - it is nothing but fraud. In my email to GDP support, I have highlighted such cases to you. The acid test - “number of votes received after you introduced CAPTCHA” - if it drops significantly, you have your answer. The second category of “intelligent, but still fraud” is sorta more difficult to catch - those who did the same fraud, but to ensure they don’t get caught, restricted the number of such votes to a believable number - 40 or 50 or so… even in these cases, you can look at the time when the vote was cast - if you do capture it. However, here we need to be careful - typically, lots of votes are cast during lunch time, esp. after you go around the office or make a round of phone calls to friends asking for votes… Anyways, lets see how all this shapes up. The jury will have some tough calls to make eventually… good luck guys. Regards Please refer to my earlier post on ‘votes and more’ High votes are no guarantee of making it to the shortlist - so just chill and let fraudsters enjoy their last weekend. Big brother is watching the logs! Stay assured. When it comes to shortlisting the TOP 9, the # of votes may certainly influence the Jury, but all I can say they will be sincerely searching for originality in application, the passion for travel, required skill-sets to make the challenge and ultimately for 9 outstanding couples. i feel that the jury will be able to sort out this issue easily. the genuine applications will find a high ratio of votes to testimonials. e.g 1300 votes and 30 testimonial is a testimonial in itself further i dont think the “fakers"have understood the format and it isnt about high number of votes, there are so many other criteria. SO guys dont waste time on this too much Banning multile votes from the same IP is a good thing here’s the reason: “When you are at work you should focus on work and if you really like your friends driving skills that much save the url and vote from home.” This way what you’re allowing is for a family of 15 people to stand in line at the Pc in the bedroom and vote for pappu ke chahcha ke driver ka friend one ofter the other….. and this is replicated in all houses of the CHS as the watman is pappu ke chacha ke driver ke friend ka shaheb think about it An Excellent finding!!! i’m obliged and now more confident about the selection procedure for the GDC team…... From last 1 week we were constantantly mainting the position between 60-70 ranks…despite of the fact that we are working like hell to get the votes for us, ....hey we do have a lot lot lot of frnds, active on Twitter, yaari, facebook, orkut.. our frnds have also voted us from all there email ids….that is the reason alias comes in like gaurav1, gaurav2 but i guess that is not wrong….. Even also we have taken help from one gaming website of our own just to have more and more publicity…..chk us profile at http://www.bettoss.com (points-top-section) and you will find us…that is really an achievement…spreading the Driving challenge fever everywhere….. but creating fake ids is just not healthy….......i guess is ppl have achieved maximum votes from these aliases only, then they should be disqualified for the next phase…........ On the contrary i have one more question…...say my father works in a PSU…and he has fwded my voting link to everyone in his office…..but being not so active on internet, they doesnt know how to open a link and vote for us…..so for that my pa is only voting on there behalf from his system (so IP will be the same) and everyone else is clickin on the confirmation mail….......... please tell me if this is not the correct way…then i Its interesting to note that none of the couples in top 40-50 have bothered to comment here The point I wanted to make is unethical voting can take multiple forms - 1) Many people here run their own companies. He/ she can just ask their 100 employees to put in at least 4 votes each. Thats 400 in a single swipe. Now what would you guys call this ? 2) Some people can vote for all the friends in ALL their mailing lists themselves and just ask them to verify. Thats 300-400 votes again. Is this ethical ? Where do we draw the line? .. anyway, I sincerely hope that the best profiles and the best couple win. Time to spruce up my profile. Cheers !! Here’s a new one. I recently got a mail from a friend who is also in the fray it read “we already voted on your behalf please just click the link in the confirmation mail” no ettiquette, no scruples! The guy had my vote the day he joined and he still sends me a mail on a different id asking for more votes. Obviously guys if it comes down to just votes you are going to get it very wrong…. We may not win this competition, which is fine. Someone has to win, and may the best application do so, and there are some superb applications among the few I looked at. But I find it hard to believe that there are folks on this page who actually ask, “if the same person votes from multiple email ids, is that OK?” I mean, when you go to vote for the Lok Sabha, is it legitimate to hunt for ways to cast your vote multiple times? Good luck to all, Just bumped across your post. And believe that your system is somewhat not fool proof. Maybe wrong, but here are my views on how it can be done. BTW, I am not a participant here. But I think you should know about this technique. How it can be Fooled : So basically, all confirmation will drop at one mailbox. You cannot track the mailbox because all referrers will appear from a normal domain xyz.com (masked) . You cannot deny the fact that user should only be of gmail.com or yahoo.com ..... okay its getting long, you get the idea. (But If you want I can give answer to this also Also, There are freelancers out there who will make 10000 e-mail ids/comments for mere $100. There are ways to mask IPs, PC config. etc….and they are pretty easy and fast to use. So practically, if anyone wants to, he/she can fool the system. How It can be Prevented :
Page 1 of 1 pages
|
Find TGDC on     
Subscribe
Google Friend ConnectRecent Posts
|
||||
© 2009. Mitsubishi Cedia Sports The Great Driving Challenge.
Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Media Center | About The Contest |
Creative Agency: Contract Advertising | Digital Agency: Experience Commerce