Anyone come across this style of cheating?

[mucka_tbfm]

I have a user on my list who has put their unique vote code on several websites but made it 1px square so it cannot even be seen. As we go by view count not clicks in, this user is getting thousands of hits a month compared to the rest of the list.

I know this is what they are doing as I keep a regular eye on my awstats and can see they get thousands of views from a site unrelated to their category. I went to one of the sites, viewed the page source and searched for their username and that is how I found them.

I have not contacted the user to say its cheating. Is this something any of you have found people doing?

 

[Mark]

I don't use page views on any list as it's not sustainable once you get a few popular members. but I was pretty sure this method of cheating was blocked nearly 10 years ago, I will need to re inspect our code to make sure it still works. Thanks for the heads up, we'll confirm or deny and post back.

 

[Basti]

Common cheat when using pageviews, one reason i do not like pageviews.
And no mark, this was not blocked. I think at least, dont see how.

server http host, parse_url all would not work i think, as that should display the toplist info not the info where the button resides. Well worth a shot to try and confirm at least

 

[Mark]

Indeed, I had a look and there is no current check or protection implemented.

Also given that any checks for this are not simple, we cannot add any as it would likely add significant overhead to every request of button.php which is already a huge resource hog while counting pageviews.

1 member with 20,000 pageviews per day joins your list and your making 100,000+ MySQL queries thanks to 1 member... wont take many members before serious server overload happens. pageview counting should be reconsidered, its easily abused and very costly on server resources.

 

[mucka_tbfm]

Fair enough! We will work a new ranking format in the new year. Only had a few people complain so far and we have nearly 600 members. Only about 60 actually put their code on their website. The rest just use it as a way of advertising which is fine by us!