If you have ever participated in an online voting competition, chances are there that you have not got much success. The reason behind it is that the voting competitions can easily manipulated since they are irresponsibly designed and can be hacked into. In most cases, the results are not at all dependent on the number of votes cast. People who are a bit aware of technology get the upper hand by manipulating the results by voting more than one time. Companies design these competitions for promotional purposes. The following guidelines will help you increase your chances of winning an online voting competition.
Knowing the system architecture
The votes of an online competition are continuously tracked with the help of many technologies. Some of them are easy to crack if you know how the system is designed.
GET method web form:
It is one of the most poorly designed architecture where the URL is used to pass on the data. If the refresh button is pressed continuously, chances are high that you can hack into it. Hide your IP address and cookies to make your connection private. Alternatively, you can use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Copy the link of the page and paste it anywhere else. Every time someone clicks on it, you get a vote.
POST method web form:
Using the back button on your browser, this architecture can be hacked. Instead of displaying the form in the URL, it is passed via the request body. Hence in terms of security it is better than the GET method web form. Block the cookies using your web browser. A few other things that may work are:
- Clearing cookies: Many online voting competitions support anonymous voting where you don’t have to sign in. You can vote repeatedly by clearing the cookies on your browser again and again. Use Google Chrome or any other extension to get the job done.
- Account Verification: You can consider creating multiple accounts where verification is required. Certainly you cannot do automated mass voting and the process requires a lot of time and effort. Never the less, it can be done.
- Verification over E-mail: You need to set up multiple email IDs and provide each of them in the contest field. The next step is to click on the link which is sent to the individual IDs to make your vote count.
Human assisted voting:
There are dozens of service providers available to use to manipulate the results of any online voting competitions (strawpoll, polldaddy, facebook app and more). These providers can be used to vote in large number. Remember to make things look realistic. For example, if all the participants receive around 100 votes per day for a particular competition and you get more than 500, chances are there you may be disqualified.
For more guidance, you may want to read how to bring highest quality real looking votes for any polls without issues.
Computer Assisted Voting:
Programmers have come up with applications that convert your PC to a bot. They work on the basis of keyboard strokes or mouse clicks. Disabled cookies combined with a hotspot shield can show amazing results. Two of the most widely used softwares are AutoHotkey and Macro Express.
In many online competitions, the security levels of email verification are quite low. Hackers target this flaw easily where the system is compromised.
Proxy and Outsourced Voting:
There are organizations that you can hire to vote for you for a nominal amount of money. This is termed as outsourced voting. Proxy voting means that the voting rights are transferred to a third party. Voting can be done from multiple accounts by a single person.
The Conclusion
Now that you have a better idea regarding how the system works, you can definitely try these tricks to yield better results for the online competitions in which you participate. If luck is on your side, you can come out with flying colors. Experts have carefully observed the online voting architecture of different systems and have come up with these techniques for the best results. You may have participated in a lot of online competitions and wondered why ever the results are not in your favor. Now that you know all these tricks, simply implement them to beat the competition!