Uggg, want to limit cheating

illmapu

Hi,

I have a site that the members get to earn credits when they show our webpages to anyone (non-members). I have it so it adds a credit into their account with no problem, my only problem is that if they(member) refresh their browser, it will keep adding credits and obviously they could add a lot of free credits into their account pretty quickly. (cheating)

I record ip of each user. What I did do was make it so if the same user visited the page, it would deduct a credit too, so it didn't add any new credits. BUT the problem that made was if a totally different member viewed the page, it deducted a credit from them too...lol

I have also tried using sessions, but they don't work the way i need them too, for example, if they show 2 diff. pages to the same person(to earn 2 credits), it doesn't let them get credit for showing two pages if i have it to stop the sessions at 1.

Does anyone know how I can stop someone from refreshing or stop them from cheating? I hope any of my jumble makes sense LOL

Thanks in advance!

drawmack

store the following information somewhere, a database is best but sessions could work. The problem with sessions is if they close their browser then go there again they'll get another credit. Anywhere here is what you want to do.

1) pick an epoch time.
2) store the ip (for everyone) and username (for members) and the page they visited
3) when someone visits the page check if they (by ip or username) have visited this page since the epoch
4) if they have not then record a credit.

for example epoch is 1 day and user 127.0.0.1 visits mypage.html

you first record their ip and the timestamp. Then you check the database base and see if they have visited mypage.html in the last day. If they have not then you record a credit for the referer.