Forum Moderators: coopster
I've a client who is keen to stop people registering multiple times on their site, what are the best ways of stopping this happening.
I'm intending to set a cookie, verify their email address and keep track of the IP Address, however IP's could in theory be shared, cookies deleted, and valid emails are not exactly hard to come by.
Is there anything else i can do?
Cheers,
hughie
For everything I've ever registered for I could have created multiple accounts if I wanted.
Why do you need to have this capability?
[edited by: eelixduppy at 11:08 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2006]
beyond a certain point you hit the law of diminishing returns with such tactics. I'd go back to the nub of the problem and ask why multiple registrations are an issue. If there's some tangible benefit to be derived from multiple registration, then people will make the effort to get round whatever measures you put in place.
(In other words, it's the underlying service that's poorly designed in that case, because it's reliant on an impracticality. You should try to make the client see that this is the case, otherwise grief will ensue sooner or later.)
If on the other hand there's no special benefit from multiple registration then the measures you are taking are probably enough to satisfy the client and deter most mischief makers.
It might be we just have to adjust the offer accordingly.
cheers,
hughie
That leaves a mail-in registration as about the best option for prevention. Not necessarily a good option.
The problem is that he's thinking of giving away a really attractive discount at his shop (both online and highstreet) and doesn't want people continually registering over and over.
Why not? Sounds like great publicity to me. Any way to turn that event to your advantage?
Threshers in the UK (booze shop) got great publicity but are possibly out of pocket after giving away 50% off wine and champagne this christmas. A nice little stunt that does rather smell of a PR department.
possibly out of pocket
The general rule of thumb with that type of campaign is to aim to break even (assume Threshers usually operate on 50% margins).
But they're making a fortune on people buying fags and beer while they're in there....
ie:
Referer
User Agent
Hammering
Link Clicks
The first two are self explanitary. Hammering is when you receive multiple registration requests within a set time frame such as 1 min when usually you might receive one a day. Link Clicks is simply logging a users browsing habbits on your website, to be compaired with other accounts, in order to detect commonalities which indicate a duplicate account.
The function "phpinfo()" should give you more tools to work with.
<?php
echo phpinfo();
?>
