TOTM manipulation: jungle1970

[seraph0x]

After reports of TOTM manipulations earlier this year, we upgraded the tracking system associated with tease rating.

Today these efforts paid off as we've finally accumulated enough evidence to take action against a specific member engaged in vote manipulation.

The member in question cast a total of 284 votes, most of which are ratings of 1, often given five or six times to otherwise well rated teases. One tease this member is quite fond of however, is his own: He rated it 5 at least 21 times.

(Note that we are using a high correlation cutoff, so there may be more votes by this person, we are simply looking at votes that can be attributed to him with a very high probability.)

It is of course possible that the votes were not cast by this person themselves, but maybe a roommate, a spouse or somebody else using the same computer. Therefore, I've come up with the following punishment which is meant to be proportional to the offense:

• All 284 votes will be rolled back
• His tease's TOTM nomination will be revoked
• He will be disqualified from participating in the TOTM for one year (until September 2013 TOTM)

We hope that he will learn his lesson and abstain from this behavior in the future. The hours he put into manipulating our ratings system will be lost.

Note that rolling back those votes will take some time as I still have to write a script to actually do it. But the data is safely stored in our database, so there is no rush.

Crime doesn't pay kids.

[supermokkori]

Seraph0x, I must applaud you.

It couldn't have been easy tracking this type of vote manipulation but it's good to know that you CAN and WILL track suspicious voting behavior. Hopefully, it will be a good preventative measure so those who have been manipulating votes in the recent past will stop.

How was it done? Multiple profiles suspiciously created on the same day from the same ISP address giving the same ratings to the same teases at the same-ish time?

I think it's probably best that Seraph0x doesn't reveal his trade secrets. That way, makes it harder for those that want to still game the system.

[seraph0x]

How was it done? Multiple profiles suspiciously created on the same day from the same ISP address giving the same ratings to the same teases at the same-ish time?

We adapt to the attacker. The more subtle the manipulation the more time we'll put into detecting them. Our approach is based on the fact that because the manipulator doesn't know certain characteristics (average number of Firefox users; average time a user waits between getting to the last page and clicking the vote button; etc.) that it'll be impossible for them to imitate regular voting traffic perfectly. So as time passes, the anomalies in the data accumulate.

For example, if we have 30% Firefox users normally, but the manipulator submits 50% of his votes with a Firefox user agent, eventually there will be a correlation between the teases that he's trying to rate up/down and Firefox users.

Another example, our voting is restricted by IP, so a manipulator might reconnect a lot to get new IPs, but of course his geolocation will be still be similar. He might also try and use proxies, Tor or a VPN to mask his real IP, however, this will greatly increase his connection latency, so again a correlation between that and the teases he's trying to manipulate the ratings of will become apparent. And of course there are so many factors (some of which are quite clever and quite top secret ) that it's easy for them to miss one.

We haven't automated most of this yet, but we are logging everything, so if vote manipulation grows as a problem, we'll be able to improve our tools and then roll back and punish not just current, but also past vote manipulation.

[Banquo]

Fantastic work Seraphox!!!



Hopefully this kind of direct action will also dissuade others from committing similar crimes against this wonderful community. I mean I can't understand why he would do it in the first place what is the point of winning something if you have to cheat to do it, especially in something where you are basically winning the respect of your peers.

Out of interest which teases did he target?

Banquo

[T€ch]

I am not trying to be a smartass but if it seems like the fake Votes are generated by a skript a Captcha on the login Page could help.
Or a restriction to 1 Vote per 5 minutes, or if it is realy bad a restriction to 1 Forum Post before you can Vote but i think this shouldn't be necessary.

[book_guy]

Wow that's some seriously hard-core sleuthing. Good work to catch the perpetrator! What a jerk he must be ... how can this be so important to him anyway? Wow, the stakes are so low, so the politics are even MORE petty. :)

[seraph0x]

Out of interest which teases did he target?

He voted his own tease up and as far as I can tell he just voted every other highly rated tease down.

Or a restriction to 1 Vote per 5 minutes

There is currently a restriction of one vote per 24 hours for unregistered users and one vote a lifetime for registered ones. (Per tease that is.)

As for the general approach of preventing vote fraud. If you give the fraudster immediate feedback by rejecting his vote, he can just work around that limitation. For example if you block by IP, they'll get a different IP. if you require registration, they'll register. Requiring registration even helps the fraudster, since 95% of votes are currently by unregistered users, so if we require registration, a single vote will have as much impact as 20 votes do right now. Meaning rather than changing his IP fourty times, he just needs to log in twice to do the same amount of damage.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this problem and the best option is to have them think they got away with it and meanwhile track the fraud and eventually undo all their hard work and publicly humiliate them. This way is much more effective and it's also more fun for the rest of us.

[Banquo]

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this problem and the best option is to have them think they got away with it and meanwhile track the fraud and eventually undo all their hard work and publicly humiliate them. This way is much more effective and it's also more fun for the rest of us.

Public humiliation is always fun *bites lip* might be a bit of an incentive for some to commit vote fraud though *chuckles*

[Sett]

Is there some kind of price for the TOTM winners? Or is it just honorary title?

Because i don't see much logic (or point) in cheating your way to honor...

Also, on the notion of public humiliation: Who?

[shell]

Is there some kind of price for the TOTM winners? Or is it just honorary title?

Because i don't see much logic (or point) in cheating your way to honor...

Also, on the notion of public humiliation: Who?

I have to say I was thinking the same thing.......I can't believe someone would do this.......*shakes my head*

You did great in figuring all of it out, Mr. Boss Man. *warm smile*

[micheleFFS]

Let me see if I get this straight.

A webtease is an interactive audio-visual composition meant to enhance sexual, primarily masturbatory, experience.

Milovana hosts, promotes, and provides help and fora for creation of webteases.

Milovana further creates interest by allowing users to rate webteases, the ratings being done in a post-ejaculatory state, with the average delay in voting Seraphox referred to presumably caused by clean-up to avoid sticky keys and other attendant evils.

Highly rated webteases are read and enjoyed more often than others and their authors praised on the site.

Neither Milovana nor the authors have any financial stake in the ratings.

And yet someone wants to take the time to manipulate the results???

Get a life!

michele

[seraph0x]

Is there some kind of price for the TOTM winners? Or is it just honorary title?

For winning the TOTM you get an imaginary vintage Ferrari 911! To collect your prize, picture yourself in a vintage Ferrari 911. You're welcome. Thanks for participating in the world's #1 most prestigious webtease competition.

But in all seriousness, the honor of the competition is in the tease not in the title. I respect certain authors because I like their works whether they've won a TOTM yet or not. The very format is imperfect, even without manipulation you can get screwed out of a win, if your best tease happens to come out in a month with stiff competition.

Despite its flaws though, it's a nice tradition, it goes back almost all the way to the founding of the site and even if it isn't perfectly fair all the time it does a reasonable job at highlighting good teases of a given month.

[seraph0x]

The ratings associated with this incident have now been reversed.

[curved]

Is there some kind of price for the TOTM winners? Or is it just honorary title?

Because i don't see much logic (or point) in cheating your way to honor...

Also, on the notion of public humiliation: Who?

The clue is in the thread title