Google tracking IP addresses

I know google tracks IP addresses to check if you are clicking your own ads, but what happens when your ISP assigns IPs as you log in and reuses them? I was tracking sign up IPs to make sure that people didn't register for a free trial more than once. The script then emailed me to let me know that someone was trying to get a second free trial. When I looked up when the IP address was last used I found it had been used origanally registered by my brother who was testing the site for me.

Now since so many people use this ISP including me (we don't have many in South Africa), and just about all my traffic will be from South Africa I am likely to see the same IP addresses quite often. (Out of 37 sign ups I have 6 IPs that occur more than 3 times)

Will I lose real clicks if google sees my IP address ? Can I get banned for this?

 

Google assigns you a special cookie which identifies you

 

mmm cookies.

I like chocolate chip.

As fryman mentioned, they have other ways besides IP to identify people. When things get dicey is when people are intentionally trying to hide from or trick google. They can detect this and this is all part of their systems to determine what is going on.

 

Thanks... another question - do they reassign the cookie when you login to your account. I deleted all mine yesterday because I got a virus

...Or maybe now would be a good oportunity to start clicking

 

It is a hidden "super" cookie, you can't delete it unless you follow a special procedure.

 

Funny stuff fryman.

 

lol, no, I'm not joking around. I try to explain it in simple terms, but that's how it works

 

So Microsoft somehow allows only Google to set these "super cookies"? What if someone uses Firefox or Safari? I can't wait to hear you explain this...

 

I think I was confused... I see that

. However, I don't know if it is possible or not to delete it just as you do with other cookies.

 

so no clicking on your own ads until 2038?

Thanks for the reply - I think I get it now.

 

A cookie is a cookie. You can delete it anytime you want.

 

Not the super cookies that fryman referred to. It's all in RFC 1149 and 2549. They are some pretty old RFCs so support for them is pretty much standard.

 

I stand corrected All those old RFC's just run together.

 

There are always ways around it, especially as a programmer, you can do all kinds of stuff to analyze the data - but it's not worth it. It'll be a glorious day when people finally realize that the time you spend doing ridiculously complicated scams just to gain a few dollars could actually be spent in a legitimate way that would probably get you more money in the end anyway.

People need to wake up and realize that scamming hurts everyone including themselves. You will get caught, you will lose any potential future income, and all the time you wasted.

 

That sure would be a glorious day...

 

If your ISP uses dynamic IP's it almost certainly assigns them out of the same class C IP range or a very small subset of class C IP ranges. Even your ISP has multiple class C ip's to use it wouldn't take long for you to end up logging into your account with IP's from the same class C range. If someone with an IP in the same class C IP range as the one you've been logging in with suddenly started clicking your ads like crazy this would be trivially simple for Google to detect.

 

Good one

For the people with only a shaky grasp on humor: no such super cookies exist. Setting the expiration date of a cookie to year 2038 only means that if you don't delete the cookie before that date (hmmm...), it will at last give up the ghost and auto-expire in the general computing chaos taking place that year..

 

The idea of a super cookie is simply silly. While I am sure Google does use cookies as one part of their defense they are trivially easy to avoid. Most browsers have methods of avoiding them. Even if Google do find some arcane way of avoiding these systems all you would need to do is have a user account on say, linux with no write permissions to the local HDD and any cookie chicanery is rendered completely useless when you use a browser.

 

I was joking about clicking my own ads. I wouldn't take the risk of the google monster coming out of my screen and grabbing me. Plus it's so much fun seeing money that you've actually earned building up (albeit painfully slowly). To my knowledge I have clicked my own ad once - the first day time I put ads up - I saw an ad I was interested in and clicked it then realised I was on my own site. I'm now very careful about clicking google ads ANYWHERE.

 

It is not clear you do get it.

You should not click on your own ads regardless of cookies or no cookies.

You should not do it because it is wrong, it is fraud, and it is stealing.

You should not do it because it costs all the rest of us money.