Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 Hi. I'm running a photo contest where viewers vote on the photos. Right now I'm limiting the number of votes to 2 per ip address, per day. But I'm worried that some people will know how to change their ip address and vote many more than twice per day. Does anyone know of a good way to do something like this? I want each unique visitor to be able to vote on each picture only twice per day. Thanks, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 set a unique id for each user, store the count for each user in a db and increment each time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Author Share Posted August 11, 2011 The voters are not necessarily registered users. I suppose I could create a session variable for each visitor, but wouldn't that get destroyed if they just reset their computer? I was thinking maybe writing their ip and machine name to a db to use as a unique id, but I'm not sure how to get the machine name. I think that gethostbyaddr() might work, but I read that it only works on Windows. Is there any other info about the visitor that I could retrieve that would identify them as unique? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TeNDoLLA Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 One option for anonymous users is to gather user information and use COOKIE, but this is not very consistent either since cookies can be manipulated or emptied. Another option could be to gather data from anonymous users like user_agent, ip etc. and create profile for them based on this information to database, but its not even close to bullet proof either. If you use sessions, the session will be destroyed when the user closes his browser, unless you again save it somewhere (file/db). And the same problem comes again: how to separate anonymous users from each other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] might also be an option here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Author Share Posted August 11, 2011 What is the difference between $_SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] and gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']); ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TeNDoLLA Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 http://php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.server.php so according to the manual they are pretty much the same thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Author Share Posted August 11, 2011 Is there any way to get the users' MAC addresses? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TeNDoLLA Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 No there is not. You would need access to local network or router that this user is connected to. And probably even then you could not get it using php. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 there is no reason you would ever need a persons mac address.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Author Share Posted August 11, 2011 Wouldn't mac address be a good way to identify unique visitors? Can it be done client side, say javascript, and ajaxed to server? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 no. why can't you use session id's for this..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 11, 2011 Author Share Posted August 11, 2011 wouldn session ids get destroyed by system restart, or by using a different browser? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 cookies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 But even cookies could be easily deleted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 When I do echo(gethostbyaddr($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])); I get some kind of key followed by what looks like a domain related to my isp. What exactly is this, and how uniquely does this identify the client? Can this be easily changed by the client user? Also, how would I use session ids to do what I'm trying to do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AyKay47 Posted August 12, 2011 Share Posted August 12, 2011 im curious, havn't used this function yet.. can you post your results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pacopag Posted August 12, 2011 Author Share Posted August 12, 2011 CPE0015e96c1a35-CM001ac35df5b0.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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