Any malpractices will not be entertained!
Nishant Das Patnaik
"Further, we would like to share a concern which we discussed earlier.
We noticed multiple IDs and duplicate entries at several occasions.
Referring to the email we sent earlier in this regards where we
clearly stated that “Any malpractices will not be entertained since we
want to build this community solely on basis of trust”. We are
reviewing the entries based on “obvious duplicities and IP address”
and NULLIFY any duplicities as identified and the entry depending on
severity of problem."
This is a snippet of the mail I received for the 3-Idiots tickets
prize. Again with all due politeness and humble submission, I too
support this view. The basis of Why?Newton community is trust to find
out the real engineering hero.
But being security as profession and dealing similar fraud cases with
Police department numerous, I want to share my 2 cents with the
community that
"Email address duplicities or IP address is IMHO not a criteria to
detect forgery in votes made to a story". Because, we know:
- If you are under a NAT (Network Address Translation) where you have
multiple internal IPs and single external IP e.g. Campus WiFi, Office
Networks, even though the votes are generated by different computers
by different users, they appear to be from single IP i.e. the networks
external IP. Also users using internet data cards viz Reliance
NetConnect, BSNL 3G, Tata Photon are also under NAT i.e many users
share a common external IP.
So NULLIFYING the votes from an IP is not fair on the part of the
supporters of the engineer.
- Email address has a high probability of being duplicates
coincidental. If you are an influential senior/alumni of a college or
a popular employee of an office, your supporters might very likely end
up voting you with nearly same email address. Also as this contest run
purely on number of vote counts, so it is natural that the supports
will always try to make their favorite engineer win by registering
maximum number of vote which is possible by registering with multiple
ids.
As this problem is quite serious, I would like to suggest the Why?
Newton Team to implement other strict and reliable ways to detect
fraud:
- Implement CAPTCHA
- Use mobile phone number verification.
- Votes should be counted, only if person has posted a story.
- Pause between successive registrations, to slow down automated
voting using bots.
It is again requested that this post should not be taken otherwise. It
was only a suggestion, which may be ignored if found useless.
Thank you.
Nishant Das Patnaik
http://nishantdaspatnaik.innovate7.com
yogi raj
Firstly, my vote to you for bringing out such useful insight in to the matter. We discussed the IP address issue earlier among ourselves since we understand the situation of being a common external IP, so that is agreed.
Regarding multiple IDs, we identified incidences where we found raj....@gmail.com / r.raj...@gmail.com / r.r.ra...@gmail.com . We understand we cannot stop it and it is quite obvious aspect of human reaction to an opportunity.
We did delete some fake IDs initially upon receiving some concern from users. But we soon realized it is going to happen again. This was a complicated situation where your ability to win does not depend on your Presentation Skills and Networking Skills, but depends on how much time you can devote on creating these IDs.
Having discussed these cases, we felt a need to communicate this to users that we are aware of the situation and request for their co-operation in building this community. Interestingly, we did not identify any significant practices post 500 registrations that will require any measures.
This is a message for us as well that the users are understanding and hold mutual respect; that is satisfying.
We are about to announce next round of winners who made it to 100 votes today! :)
Once again, we thank you for bringing this information and analysis to this forum.
Thanks and regards,
Yogi
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Warm regards,
Yogi
------
Yogi Raj
Connecting Engineers at www.whynewton.com
Gurgaon | India
Nishant Das Patnaik
I'm a fan of it ever since I heard the idea from Sai. :)
Cheers to you all guys.
On Dec 22, 11:38 pm, yogi raj <yyogi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Nishant,
>
> Firstly, my vote to you for bringing out such useful insight in to the
> matter. We discussed the IP address issue earlier among ourselves since we
> understand the situation of being a common external IP, so that is agreed.
>
> Regarding multiple IDs, we identified incidences where we found
> raj.am...@gmail.com / r.raj.am...@gmail.com / r.r.raj.am...@gmail.com . We
> understand we cannot stop it and it is quite obvious aspect of human
> reaction to an opportunity.
>
> We did delete some fake IDs initially upon receiving some concern from
> users. But we soon realized it is going to happen again. This was a
> complicated situation where your ability to win does not depend on your
> Presentation Skills and Networking Skills, but depends on how much time you
> can devote on creating these IDs.
>
> Having discussed these cases, we felt a need to communicate this to users
> that we are aware of the situation and request for their co-operation in
> building this community. Interestingly, we did not identify any significant
> practices post 500 registrations that will require any measures.
>
> This is a message for us as well that the users are understanding and hold
> mutual respect; that is satisfying.
>
> We are about to announce next round of winners who made it to 100 votes
> today! :)
>
> Once again, we thank you for bringing this information and analysis to this
> forum.
>
> Thanks and regards,
> Yogi
>
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 11:52 PM, Nishant Das Patnaik
> <nishant...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > whynewton+...@googlegroups.com<whynewton%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>