On Wed, 2009-02-18 at 15:54 -0500, Andrew Ballard wrote: > On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 3:43 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > At 1:54 PM -0500 2/18/09, Andrew Ballard wrote: > >> > >> On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 1:41 PM, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> > >> > Granted this is an involved method, but email addresses are unique and > >> thus > >>> > >>> ensures one vote per email address. > >> > >> E-mail addresses are (somewhat unique -- not getting into aliases, > >> forwards, and such) e-mail delivery points, they are not a unique > >> index of PEOPLE. You point out below that a single person can have > >> multiple addresses. I also know several families where the entire > >> family shares one address. > > > > No -- email addresses are unique. > > > > Don't confuse the issue by looking at how many people can use a single email > > address, but rather that each email address IS unique that many people can > > use. > > > > Keep in mind that on the right side of the @ is the domain name, which is > > absolutely unique -- and on the left side of the @ only one mail box per > > specific string is allowed. While I can have "tedd@xxxxxxxxxxxx" and > > "ted@sperling" dump into one account, there is still only one account. > > > > The process has to be that way or this email thing would not work. > > > > Cheers, > > > > tedd > > You're missing my point. Yes, e-mail addresses are unique delivery > points. They can not, however, uniquely identify one and only one > person -- which is what one would need in the OP's situation. > > Andrew > No, but it is as close as you'll get to uniquely identifying a person. If worse comes to worse, you could limit by an amalgamation of data. So if several votes all come from the same IP, but they are spread over a large enough timespan, then they are probably genuine. If the same number of votes all came through within a few seconds, this is probably a bit more suspect. Likewise, a family might all decide to vote within minutes of each other, but they are generally going tp use the same browser. If you see lots of votes come through from different browsers on the same IP within a short space of time, it would more than likely be suspect, i.e. people trying to get around what they would presume any such identifier might look for. At the end of the day I think it's a fine line between accuracy and complexity, with your own time being somewhere between the extremes of both. Ash www.ashleysheridan.co.uk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
