Anyone have any advice on setting up online polls that aren't susceptible to the usual types of fraud? How much does it help to have email verification, for instance? Are there any methods that are fraud-proof or is it just a matter of degree? Thanks in advance for any help.
No online poll is fraud proof. The e-mail verification system for instance, can be easely bypassed by such methods as bots that create accounts or even those e-mail in 10 seconds providers.
Your best bet would probably to set a poll through Facebook or similar site. It wouldn't be fraud-proof, but it would help ensure a one-person one-vote outcome.
I think filtering by IP address rather than email would be more effective. A new email address is extremely easy to come by. A new IP address is slightly more difficult--a casual user wouldn't know how to do it, generally. Many online polling systems allow IP filtering. Is there a particular one you're looking at?
Thanks for the replies - the reason Facebook is fraud-proof is because you need to be a Facebook member to vote, right? No - are there some you'd recommend?
Depends. Do you have your own web space (and MySQL database, PHP access, etc.) to run a poll program? Or does it have to be a hosted solution?
One problem with IP filtering is that if someone uses multiple connections to the internet, they can vote multiple times. For instance, if they use the internet at home, work, and school, then they can vote three times. My school has polls on it's website, I can (and do ) vote multiple times on different IP addresses. (They're just-for-fun polls, nothing serious).
There's no real foolproof way to insulate online polls from fraud. IP filtering helps, e-mail filtering helps ... but there are ways around just about every filter you can throw out there. Even if you require specific accounts to vote, people can still register and vote with multiple accounts.
That's still going to limit vote fraud for the average user. They could vote 2, maybe 3 times, but no more unless they have access to proxies. Requiring a unique email is just too easy--email addresses are completely disposable now. The poll could be tanked in a hurry that way.
I'm asking this for work, so yes we have our own website and MySQL database. Thanks for all the recommendations, this is very interesting!
A little poking around and I found The Amazing Little Poll. It's pretty simple and relies on a flat file instead of a database. It uses a cookie rather than IP or email filtering to prevent fraud. It's also designed to be included in existing pages. Other than trying to diminish fraud, what features do you require? Just a list of options, and a graph showing the results?
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