checking ip

Anon

Is there a way to check with similar ip's for fraud.

I need to be able to tell if someone has clicked on a link more than once so that the cost per click would only be one valid click per user per week.

IE: 212.262.132.10 & 212.262.19.106

These two ips would be classed as the same person, because 212.262.1 are the same.

Is there a better way to check this?

Thanks.

Anon

This gets REALLY sticky because of the fact that there are ENORMOUS amounts of people behind AOL proxies - so ruling out one person might rule out thousands of valid clicks. I would say a better way would be to set a cookie in your redirect script as you pass them on - then in the redirect script check for the cookie - if they don't have it then don't count the click. In all fairness you shouldn't really be using the IP since many ISP's use proxies (thus thousands of users appear as one). Just my $0.02

--Joe
http://www.miester.org

Anon

cookie ... if they don't have it don't count the click

Ahh, if I read him correctly he's looking for the opposite:

Is there a way to check with similar ip's for fraud.
I need to be able to tell if someone has clicked on a link more than
once so that the cost per click would only be one valid click per user

This almost sounds like voting security, and it's not well served by
cookies. If you do see a cookie you've sent (and suitably provided
with some kind of security hash to prevent tampering and/or
counterfeiting) then it's a fairly good sign we have seen you before,
but the absence of a cookie is by no means proof you haven't been
here just a few minutes before.

IE: 212.262.132.10 & 212.262.19.106
These two ips would be classed as the same person, because 212.262.1
are the same.

You just lost me; these are completely different addresses, and probably
don't even belong to the same organization.

Is there a better way to check this?

Perhaps you could explain the end result you're trying to achieve in
a bit more detail.

Anon

Thanks for the replies.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear.

I'm trying to create a 'pay-for-placement' search engine, the advertiser with the top bid for a keyword is listed number 1 is the keyword results.

I have to make sure that if a visitor clicks on one linke two or more times, the advertiser is charged once. Also, at the moment the cookie is the only way to go, and one that works well, but if I can't set a cookie then I don't want to lose the income from a valid click by ignoring all clicks without a cookie.

The only other way I could think of was to use the ip address, I'm not too sure how the ip address works exactly but I studied my ip address and each time I log on to the same telephone number, I get similar numbers, ie
216.233.23.160 or 216.233.291.13

I figured that the only way to tell if it may be the same person is by checking the first few numbers and see if they match.
ie: 216.233.2.* Would be a match.

Thanks for your help,
Stuart

Anon

Well my suggestion is log the ip address and have it deleted each day. If the same address is used on the click then it won't be charged. Even though maybe 200 people can use the same IP, you will loose a lot of money if all 200 click on the same day.