Help preventing cheating in an online contest (online poll)

[mariahlullaby]

Hi guys,

We're currently running a contest on our web site that allows our visitors to vote for their favorite contestant in a singing contest. None of us are real web developers, so we rely on free poll services. We chose to use ballot-box.net because it had a customizable interface, up to 20 answer choices, unlimited bandwidth, and blocked multiple votes.

However, the "block" is done using cookies, meaning it's very easy to vote multiple times by deleting your cookies.

Our web site is http://www.mariahdaily.com. If you look on the left sidebar, you will see our current poll -- and if you see the results, you'll see how unbelievably inflated it is.

We plan on re-doing the poll, but we want to make it more secure.

Any ideas of either
a) Alternate voting options
b) Alternate FREE polling booths?

We're considering using an email form for the votes. Is there any way to configure Mail to automatically delete any emails from a duplicate IP address?

Any help is appreciated! THANK YOU!

The web site is: http://www.mariahdaily.com/

 

[redeye be]

I have no practical help but besides cookies, as you pointed out you could filter by IP.
Neither of them really works, as a lot of people connect with variable IP (every time I connect to the net I get a different address from my ISP's pool).

So your best bet would be to go for the cookies And IP filtering stuff. I have no idea however where this service would be offered.

You could ask your voters to register and weed out the people that register multiple times.

I did read something a few months ago about someone being able to identify computers by the subtle variations in their internal clocks, but that was more CIA stuff, not really online poll things.

Good luck

 

[mariahlullaby]

I have no practical help but besides cookies, as you pointed out you could filter by IP.
Neither of them really works, as a lot of people connect with variable IP (every time I connect to the net I get a different address from my ISP's pool).

So your best bet would be to go for the cookies And IP filtering stuff. I have no idea however where this service would be offered.

You could ask your voters to register and weed out the people that register multiple times.

I did read something a few months ago about someone being able to identify computers by the subtle variations in their internal clocks, but that was more CIA stuff, not really online poll things.

Good luck

Hey thanks . I think we'll just keep looking for a new poll, I supppose. I appreciate the tips!