What methods exist to prevent a one person from registering multiple accounts on a forum/social networking site? How effective are those methods and how easy is it to get around them? Thanks in advance for the help.
Not many to be honest and I dult they are effective. If someone wants to register to spam they will just use a proxy or use someone elses pc etc...
I think almost all require a unique email address, no other way to prohibit a sign-up, admin can check the IP which I think is built into most of those software, I guess there is no way of stopping someone who insists of having multiple user accounts if they are determined to do it.
-preventing same email sign ups -preventing same username sign ups -preventing same IP sign ups -preventing proxy users to sign up using anti proxy solutions -24/7 live monitor of accounts for false text sign up + develop a facility which is able to monitor accounts 24/7 for the same keywords and cross match DB and display results
Thanks for the replies so far. On an site how useful is requiring users to enter their street address, name etc. to prevent them from defrauding other users of their money. What methods can you use to check to see if the names/address are legitimate? Like what does paypal/google do to verify account info?
If you use an Anti Proxy Solution then you will screw over your business and lose a large amount of customers because there are thousands if not millions of people who use Internet services such as AOL which uses proxies. That's a good way but the problem with this is that people can just use someone elses address to signup. So there really is no real way to stop multiple account creations for a Social Networking site.