How to Identify anonymous users for a poll?

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Hi All,

I've created a Poll user control using asp.net
Anonymous visitors will vote in this poll

I need to prevent visitor from voting multiple times

I cannot identify visitors by IP addresses, because:

1- Most of visitors have dynamically-allocated IP addresses, then may the same visitor has different IP address the next time he visits the website

2- All visitors of a network may have the same IP address

So I'm currently save a unique GUID key for the visitor in cookies, but the problem is that visitor may delete cookies, and also when something forced app domain to be restarted, cookies will be lost

Any better ideas.

Thanks in Advance.

Posted 19-Jul-11 18:29pm

Ahmad Safwat

Updated 19-Jul-11 19:38pm

Ramalinga Koushik

v3

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3 solutions

Solution 2

It looks you're completely right in your reasoning. You don't identify the user, that's it.

Whatever you do, you cannot prevent the situation when a user goes to the demo hall of the store, takes a computer connected with the internet (this situation is very usual; I used this possibility sometimes) and vote there. There is nothing which you can use to identify this person as the one who already voted. Technically, this is the new person.

Conclusion: there is nothing you can do unless you could use biometrics, which is not realistic.

—SA

Posted 19-Jul-11 18:42pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

Ahmad Safwat 20-Jul-11 1:08am

Thanks alot SAKryukov

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Jul-11 2:01am

You're welcome.
--SA

Solution 3

You have to question your original assumption of not making the users register or identify themselves.

I think an interesting solution that is starting to appear in more places is to let a person log into msn, or facebook, or windows live or whatever, through your site.

Then use that identity to track votes.

It puts the effort of verifying a true identity onto a resource with more horsepower than any of us can hope to create with our own procedures.

Posted 19-Jul-11 19:18pm

kmh72756

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Ahmad Safwat 20-Jul-11 1:23am

Thank you, it's a greate idea

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 20-Jul-11 2:03am

But how? By name? Nickname? Spelling mistakes? What's the user's footprint at the poll? Anonymous is anonymous. Cannot get your idea. Could you explain it?
--SA

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Prerak Patel · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-19T18:38:00

Solution 1

Check the top voted answer.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352232/identifying-anonymous-users[^]

Posted 19-Jul-11 18:38pm

Prerak Patel

Comments

Ahmad Safwat 20-Jul-11 1:07am

Thanks alot Prerak

Espen Harlinn 20-Jul-11 19:13pm

That answer, on stackoverflow, was well written - my 5