Block duplicate votes on poll

Anon

Hi there.

Who can help me with this?

I have a php-poll on my site. I don't want people to be able to vote twice. Currentlye the poll is checking cookies, but that doesn't work to well. I want it to check the ip-addresses from the voters. Who knows how to do thid???

Thanx

junkie_doodle

although most of the voters would have dynamic ip addresses ,$REMOTE_ADDR envirement variable would give you the ip address of the guest.But I dont think that it would be stable as only itself.In my oppinnion a combination of cookie ,remote ip and session would give you an enough security. If their browser doesnt accept cookies dont let them to vote.

But never warn them for voting more than once.. Let them think that they voted again and again.. This would keep your filter away from most of the eyes. In that case most of them wont delete their cookies ,the rest wont think of logging out and a few of the rest wouldnt try to hang-up and re-dial for another ip. Ofcourse this security has vulnerabilities.. But I think that would be enough for a poll..

What do you think?

amcgrath

Set a cookie, session, etc. It'ss be more accurate.

Anon

Well, the cookies thing is in it. It look's like this:

$cookiename = 'symp'.$p->tstamp;
GLOBAL $$cookiename;
if(isset($sympvotes[$cookiename]))
{ $scookie1 = $sympvotes[$cookiename]; }
elseif(isset($$cookiename))
{ $scookie1 = $$cookiename; }

if(isset($scookie1))
  { return resultsUI( $p, new Result($p->pid), $scookie1); }
elseif($vo == $p->pid)
  { return resultsUI( $p, new Result($p->pid), -1); }
else
  { return boothUI($p, $rand); }

}
}

How do I put the ip-thing in it? Any help?

amcgrath

Junkie told u : $REMOTE_ADDR.. as for the "cookies thing" are you sure you're even setting one? (I'm kinda wondering, what with "cookie thing" and "ip-thing", I want to be sure you know you have to SET the cookie in order for it to be available, and I don't see the see the set_cookie() function in you r code)....

junkie_doodle

Could you please tell me more about your project?

-> what database are you using
-> what kind of a cookie content does your code uses
-> how would you like to store raw vote identities (db,csv)

then I may help you to find documentation.

Your code includes a variety of functions that we may not even have an idea about. We dont know the class you used in your code and more points left obscure.

Anon

Well, I'm using a MySQL database to store the results. I didn't make the codes myself, I just made some adjustments. If you wanna help, you can download the complete code from http://freggle.campus.tue.nl/sympoll.zip (57 Kb).

Thanx