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MLB says it has canceled as many as 65 million All-Star ballots. Is this legit?!

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DaClyde

Well-known member
Jan 17, 2010
1,614
58
Huntsville, AL
Per the rules for online voting:
Ballots generated by a script, macro or other mechanical, automated means will be disqualified. Over-votes in any category will not be recorded.

So most likely they detected something that looked like automated voting and decided to kill those results. Or Bud Selig called and just told them to change it.
 

rsmath

Active member
Nov 8, 2008
6,086
1
MLB realized the 650 Royals fans in existence couldn't have possibly voted 100,000 times each.

you can create multiple email addresses to vote so it's doable to legitimately vote hundreds of times combined if using a few different email addresses.
 

hairyharold

Member
Mar 20, 2014
141
0
my same thoughts on this....whats the point? they allow people to vote 25 times or something like that per account what do you expect to happen

If they are going to make the results say what they want by scrubbing the data, why bother letting people vote at all?
 

CrawfordFan13

New member
Jan 19, 2015
15
0
I said this in the dramatic thread posted a few days ago about the Royals. It was obviously a scripter(s) running a program to put in the votes. The right move was done by the MLB, credit to them for not being afraid to admit they had a faulty system that had a hole in security.
 

Waxov

New member
Mar 23, 2013
669
0
USA
I said this in the dramatic thread posted a few days ago about the Royals. It was obviously a scripter(s) running a program to put in the votes. The right move was done by the MLB, credit to them for not being afraid to admit they had a faulty system that had a hole in security.

+1, well said.
 

fordman

Well-known member
Feb 22, 2013
3,190
32
Ohio
I wonder why MLB doesnt use IP address combined with email account to check votes casts? Bet this is where it is heading.

Fordman
 

George_Calfas

Well-known member
Aug 22, 2008
36,264
30
Urbana
I wonder why MLB doesnt use IP address combined with email account to check votes casts? Bet this is where it is heading.

Fordman
If I am not mistaken, universities, libraries, hotels, and many other site will utilize the same IP address for their consumers. [MENTION=1794]A_Pharis[/MENTION]?
 

A_Pharis

Active member
If the MLB were to used something based on IP address - you have external IP addresses vs. internal IP addresses.

Go to http://www.thisipis.com
That is your external IP address as assigned by your ISP. It can be static (as in most cases with business that utilize remote access) or dynamic (most residential accounts). If you do have a static, you are usually assigned a sequential block of addresses, depending on your need.

Now, go to your command prompt and type in "ipconfig". You will see your internal IP address. Most residential modems/routers, by default, will have the 192.168.1.# scheme. This is your IP address as identified by your gateway (router) and doesn't mean much when you're looking at a network from the outside. As a matter of fact, if I were to say:

"Hey, guys - my IP address is 192.168.1.10! Ping me!"
You'd likely be pinging a device on your own internal network. Why? Because that IP address is only utilized locally. If your router uses the same scheme, then you'll only see a reply if another device on your network has that IP address.

Now. If I were the MLB and I decided to just ban a specific external IP address (which is what I'd see the scripted traffic coming from), I'd actually be banning anything on that network. So if it is a business utilizing only one static IP address, the whole network behind it would be blocked. Not that big of a deal, right? Wrong. In some instances, you could be banning any number of regions of cellular data networks, and they can use that same external for cellular data access in a pretty good radius.

Then you have the problem with proxies. Anyone who writes a script can write one to have you hop proxies and make it look like every vote is coming from a different external IP address.
 
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A_Pharis

Active member
Most places that include some sort of poll utilize cookies that kind of "tag" your browser that you've already voted. Those could be bypassed by using a different browser or, in some cases, just by clearing your cached cookies.

At the end of the day, online voting is just a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY poor way to do this as there is a VERY large community of people who are VERY good at finding ways to abuse it.
 

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