Pageview Fraud Detection

how to detect pageview fraud

[beaudeal]

Hi Everyone,

I was looking at MetaCafe the other day and their producer rewards program and they pay out based on how many times a video is viewed by unique users (otherwise you could just play your own video all day and get paid). What I'm wondering is how this is done, not just with video, but with pageviews in general. My instincts say that you track IP addresses, but I'm pretty sure these can be spoofed, changed, hidden, etc. So if anyone knows the best way in which to detect pageview fraud could you please explain? Thanks so much!

Alex

P.S. I know this doesn't seem like a PHP question, but if I were to code something like this it would be in PHP / MySQL.

[henry0]

Probably done in a similar way your server stats lists
"unique"

[beaudeal]

Hi henry0,

Thanks for the response -- however, I'm more curious about the actual implementation -- I have no idea how my server stats count uniques so if you have an insight, thatd be great.

Alex

[henry0]

Unique is one visit per day from one given IP
you may record in a DB such number and IP address
however if you are concerned by spoofing and others
I consider that if someone goes that way there is not too much that can be done
banning an IP is OK for a while but they'll come back with another one.
On some site I have an IP filter that check for IP range and only allows for traffic from specific Country/Countries.
this will be quite a bunch of scripting and tons of DB rows
but the basic idea is to start with

<?
// display real IP
function visitorIP() { 
$ipParts = explode(".", $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']); 
if ($ipParts[0] == "165" && $ipParts[1] == "21") { 
if (getenv("HTTP_CLIENT_IP")) { 
$ip = getenv("HTTP_CLIENT_IP"); 
} elseif (getenv("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR")) { 
$ip = getenv("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR"); 
} elseif (getenv("REMOTE_ADDR")) { 
$ip = getenv("REMOTE_ADDR"); 
} 
} else { 
return $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; 
} 
return $ip; 
} 
?>

[beaudeal]

Awesome. Thanks so much for the help with this! On another note -- is there anything that can really be done to STOP pageview fraud? I mean theoretically can a person keep changing their IP so it seems as though its someone different looking each time?

[henry0]

Sorry I am not a specialist in this field
however if I am correct there are probably as much fraud in pageview as in PPC and others alike.

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