Republican Candidate Supporters Cheat Polls/Digg.com
As much as it pains me to say this, several of the Republican candidates for President have a following that is playing downright dirty across the web. In fact, they’re flat out cheating, and we’ve caught them red handed.
What candidates have these cheating fan clubs? So far, we’ve been able to pinpoint large groups of cheaters who support Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, and Newt Gingrich. Granted, we can’t start pointing fingers at the candidates themselves, because we have no way of knowing if they are indeed involved. My guess is that they aren’t. But we should certainly contact them and let them know we think they should condemn such actions.
The first group we’ll talk about is the Ron Paul “cyber following”. This group has been very aggressive over the past few weeks. They’ve slammed social bookmarking giant Digg.com with brand new accounts that were set up for one purpose… manipulating Digg results.
Right now, my estimates would show there are between 150 to 1000 people involved over all. It isn’t a large number, but they’re using IP masks and other dodgy methods that allow them to create multiple accounts, erase cookie’s and vote multiple times in both internet polls and social bookmarking sites.
In a recent online poll, Ron Paul votes came in hot and heavy. There were over 400 from a single block of IP addresses that are allotted to an aircraft manufacturer, 200+ from a single ISP in St Louis, and a few IP ranges that had over 100 votes each concentrated in a small geographic area (i.e. one person that kept getting new addresses).
By doing this they were able to manipulate results and make it appear as if Ron Paul was leading with ease.
And just today, fans of Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo were caught cheating the official Pajama’s Media Straw Poll.
our eagle-eye IT team has caught more cheaters spamming for two candidates (Tancredo, Gingrich). Those votes have been deducted.
On a private forum this comment was added regarding the issue.
They repeat both processes - and in some cases, using a unix/linunx system and the tools available there (perl, wget, etc), its possible to even automate the vote+reset+vote cycle, with delays in between to keep “spamming” alerts from hitting.
With this technique, 30-40 fanatics can throw several hundred to over a thousand votes onto any internet poll in a day or two. For a prime example of this go to Pajamas media - the main site. Check the poll results over all. Then check the “this precinct” votes. Nearly every vote for Ron Paul has come through the main PJ site, and has been cast in the past 48 hours.
Same thing does with the digg stories - nearly all of the hundreds of Diggs they stories got were from accounts registered within the last 3 days.
So while I’ve gone after “liberals” for doing this, I must be fair and go after “conservatives” for doing the same.
Knock it off! Cheating is cheating, and in the end it hurts everyone involved.
-Eric Odom
Popularity: 3% [?]
