Kerry Supporters Running Automated Scripts to "Win" online polls

Poll Fixing - Example from Linux Today ^ | self

[Salvation]

BTTT for all to read.

[newzhawk]

What worries me about the strange bitter behaviour of these Dem Underdogs is that they are so morally challenged with the foul language and corrupt nature that I suspect cheating lying and violence will be the nature of the game for these people for Nov 2- win at all costs.Pray for victory on our side - we need to keep up with the changes to improve the moral character of this country or we are not worth saving

[Enlightiator]

Heres the code used to automatically vote for the MSNBC poll fraud story I posted

[dmw]

Greta was just saying on FOX how she is surprised at the lopsided poll results on the FOX poll. She doesn't have a clue??

[Robert_Paulson2]

can't be blocked.
each time they visit the site, it comes from a different phony IP, browser type and the cookie is dumped for a new one.

not really that hard to do.
It should not surprise anyone that it is being done.

It's like a random denial of service attack that simply casts a vote, broadcasts a phony ip, and erases the old cookie.

voila.
And very likely the webmaster who is looking at the logs, KNOWS it is happening...

to get a real vote, you would have to send a password to an existing email account, then require the user to use that password to access the voting interface.... and back up the results password hash in a database lookup table. Would the script work on it? No, not as written, and writing a new one and going through the email process manually over and over again would get to be a drag...

unless you set up a php mail() script that tripped a trigger every time a new password arrived... and reran itself.

and yes, there people who do NOTHING but think of that kind of stuff, and lots worse even... all day and all night 24/7/366.

[jporcus]

These are definitely scripts - it is surprising that the "unscientific" polls keep getting quoted.

[politicalwit]

Why are you folks sooo obsessed with democraticunderground? Let them do their thing and show themselves for the fools they really are.

[boycottliberalhollywood.com]

FoxNews is over 70% kerry. What kind of "scripts" do this and why don't websites block them, anyway?

Why don't websites block them?

• The developers don't know how to block them (unlikely)
• Somebody wants folks to spam the results (ding ding ding, I think we have a winner)

[boycottliberalhollywood.com]

Who cares about on-line polls?

• People too disinterested to watch the debate itself
• People interested in telling their disinterested friends about the poll results

[boycottliberalhollywood.com]

you run a program like wget or lynx within a looping script and you can saturate the vote count.

Yep. If you know some .ASP, some .PHP, some Cold Fusion; pick your poison, writing up a polling spambot is a 15-minute fun exercise.

On-line polls are about as trustworthy as on-line voting.

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

vote - clear cookie - vote - clear cookie

Nope. That requires a human pounding away at a keyboard. Much faster way would be to install a freeware text-only web browser such as Lynx on your PC or Linux box or wherever, and write a script that does some call like this:
  lynx -dump "http://.........."

in an infinite loop. Then you can vote up to hundreds of times a second (probably slower, depending on network traffic and the load on the webserver). It may take a bit of sleuthing to figure out which URL performs the vote. With really complex webpages you may have to turn on a network traffic monitor to see exactly what your webbrowser is sending their webserver, and then incorporate that into the Lynx call.

If the polling website is sophisticated enough to look for IP addresses and throw out multiple votes coming from the same IP address, then you'll have to get a bit more sophisticated. Say, do something like make your Linux box into a router, and then each time your program sends out a new vote, pretend that you're not the originator of the traffic, but rather that you're just passing on something that came from someone else, and the IP address of that someone else is .... (use a random number generator to pick a new IP address each time). Pretty simple.

Of course the polling sites could try more sophisticated countermeasures to try to detect spamvotes, but then you could eventually figure out what those measures are and take appropriate counter-counter-measures.

Look at it this way: If the best minds in Computer Science can't figure out a way to prevent spam mail, what's the likelihood they can figure out a way to prevent spam votes?

A much better way to set up a spam-resistant (though probably not spam-proof) poll would be to show a graphic that contains letters/numbers and ask the voter to type into the box exactly what he sees in the photo. Usually, websites that employ these "anti-bot" mechanisms add a large variety of "noise" to the graphic that obscures the letters/numbers to the point where they're just barely legible to human brains but are virtually impossible for Optical-Character-Recognition software to decipher. Also, if they wait 10 to 20 seconds before presenting you with the graphic, they slow down spam vote programs from dozens of times per second to once every 10 to 20 seconds minimum. (And complex graphics will hopefully force OCR decipherers to take a significant amount of computing time to figure out, assuming they can figure it out at all).

The Leftists' spamming of these votes lately could have a good effect: When all these media outlets discover that their online polls are becoming increasingly useless (eg, a polling result of 850 billion "Yes" votes versus 347 "No" votes should be a pretty solid clue to most people), they'll either do away with them entirely, or else install one of those graphic anti-bot mechanisms like I mention above.

[dougherty]

No surprise after the way they tried to steal the election in 2000. The dems are cheats, frauds, crooks.....

[blondee123]

FReep THIS poll while you're at it.

Best poll I've seen so far. By the way, I'm helping DU cheat, let's run those numbers up to a rediculous %.

[Salamander]

Thanks for writing an explanation even *I* can understand....:)

[blondee123]

KEEP UPSIDE DOWN FREEPING

Who won the debate?

CBS POLL

President Bush: 11.47%

John Kerry: 88.02%

Neither man. It was a draw: 0.51%

NOTE: This is not a scientific poll. The results above are for information purposes only, and should not be confused with the results of the scientific polls conducted by CBS News.

[blondee123]

Greta was just saying on FOX how she is surprised at the lopsided poll results on the FOX poll. She doesn't have a clue??

DUH!

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

Click Here for
ALL the Swift Boat Vets Ads!

Hanoi Kerry : Help is on the way!
Hanoi Jane Partners with MoveOn.Org
Click Here


"First I picked Edwards BUT now I pick Hanoi Jane!"

Edwards played football in 1971 when he turned 18
instead of serving in Vietnam.
Hanoi Jane at least was a Viet Cong!
Just like me!

Hanoi Jane and I know how to demoralize US Troops serving today!

We hate US Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We hate all US Troops!

We lie about them in 2004 the same as we did in the 60's and 70's!

We vow to insult and undermine Iraq Prime Minister Ayad Allawi

We vow to protect the UN and the Oil for Food Scandal

We vow to keep secret the ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida

We vow to free Saddam Hussein with help from our old friend Ramsey Clark.

John F. Kerry
Timeline of a traitor.
Click Here

Free online version of
Kerry's "The New Soldier"
You can read it online right now.

[Salamander]

A talking head on Greta's show just mentioned that their poll results were likely the result of MacAuliffe's email campaign to kerry's supporters and therefore, basically useless.
He even mentioned the Dems who were no doubt sitting up all night hitting the polls everywhere.

I had to laugh.

The guy must lurk here....:)

[BigSkyFreeper]

I love how you guys come up with these fitting nicknames for the Left Wing Bledia!

Like Ron Brownstain of the LAT.

[Salamander]

Wow.
Parallel universe.
Look at my post right under yours....:))