Automated Competition Entries - Compers Unite!

sinner2winner

sorry - who is jason?

Mamzie

hes the main man at Loquax, another major comping site,

you made some great comments last night Nicci, xxx

ehlittleone

Thank you very much for the links libra interesting reading.

What caught my eye was that the IPM are sponsored by one of the companies with links to automated competition entries hmmmm. I think I know what company this is. Sounds a bit dodgy.

And good on Jason for trying to do something about it.

jdsaint

Do you think the companies that run the competitions realise or mind that this is happening? Is there anything that can be done to stop it - ie if we all wrote to the IPM to get them stopped?

Disclaimer - Jason as mentioned above.

The IPM (imo) won't stop them as auto-entry services aren't illegal. They advise their clients about them and that's about it.

What is effective is contacting comp organisers who either appeared on the "comps entered" lists of these services or who's terms omitted "auto entries disqualified" and who's competition was exposed (e.g. forms, email entry etc).

If you visit the auto entry sites they list the sites that target or the comps they target. A bit of search and you can easily piece together which sites appear. In some cases they still target sites who have told us they disqualify such entries.

Imo it's a big issue for comping (4000 entries to 20,000 entries aren't insignificant numbers) and it's good to see it appear here.

Jason

ehlittleone

jdsaint wrote: »

Imo it's a big issue for comping (4000 entries to 20,000 entries aren't insignificant numbers) and it's good to see it appear here.

Jason

Hello Jason

May I thank you for your hard work in trying to do something about this. :T

I had a look to see if I could see on one site what companies are targetted but couldn't find so have nicked this from your blog, hope you don't mind me posting a link to this (which is different to the 2 above)

http://blog.loquax.co.uk/automatedentries/revealing-more-about-automated-competition-entry-services-1462.htm

"Anyway, amongst the latest promoters targeted by Prize Draw Centre are Woman and Home, Cosmopolitan, Absolute Radio, Daisy Green Magazine, BBC Good Food, The Guardian, Nisa Locally, iVillage, Web User, Female First, Hot Dinners, The Telegraph, 4Music, Vogue, Homes and Antiques, Parents Lounge, Splenda, Westfield, Nivea, WD40, The Cheese Shed, Zirtek and Clipper Teas."

These are some big name companies!

I wish we could get more compers interested in this thread and maybe we could help you to do something about it.

I had a look at one of the sites testimonials it did make me laugh

“Thanks to comping I can shower my family and friends with wonderful gifts that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford”
"have been comping for two and a half years and have won some amazing prizes"
“Every day when the postman calls it is really exciting to think that maybe I will have a winning letter. I love comping – I wouldn’t give it up for anything!”

How is paying a cheque to someone else to enter for you "comping"?

I'm happy to email these companies to try to get these automated entries stopped. Anyone else interested? Maybe we could get together a standard letter and if enough of us did it they might take notice. Have you thought about a petition Jason?

As Jason says the only way to get it stopped is for us compers to do something about it and there's plenty of us to have a voice.

jdsaint

Maybe we could get together a standard letter and if enough of us did it they might take notice. Have you thought about a petition Jason?

We did something like this a few months back (think it may be on one of the blogs).. and one of the results was PDC switching their lists to not show the site names lol.

But, it did alert many of the promoters - a lot of the magazine sites (including those you mention) for example have looked in to this and now (so we're told) delete auto-entries. I need to do another blog on who's being targeted so will try this week.

The hard part is keeping momentum going, people interested etc. A lot of compers confuse auto-entry services with Roboform/auto fillers.

With a letter we just pointed out the issues that might arise, why we thought it was wrong, and what to look out for and linked them to our blogs.. plus if they appeared on an auto-entry site, a link to them.

Perhaps it might be an idea for MSE to add some info to their comp guide so you guys can refer promoters to it - I'm happy for information on our blog to be shared.

Jason

dazza12

A word about captcha services - I was asked by a client of mine (not related to comping but still relevant - they dealt with online job applications) about how to stop automated services from filling in their forms.

It led me to look into the various captcha methods. A lot of them are easy to read letters but off centre, a few show letters in a grid etc. Software now exists that will keep refreshing the captcha until it shows one that it can decipher and use that to enter. Other software has a human fill in the captcha only (if easy to read) but fills in the rest of the details automatically.

The only one that seems to be effective is the recaptcha used by ITV etc. This is the one where two words are shown together but one of them is obscured, the other distorted. I looked into why this was, and how true the 'filling in one word only' comment I heard some time ago was. It was developed as part of a project to digitise old books and texts. In a lot of cases the text is of an old style, which means normal optical character recognition (OCR) software can't read it. Their site breaks these difficult words up and provide them as an image. By filling these in the captcha does two jobs - it deciphers the word and verifies that it's a human. Once it's had a few people decipher the word and a number of similar responses, the software provides this back to the original document which is then used as the digitised text. The other word already has been recognised several times so this is used as the verification word - in other words the one that proves you're not a machine. Some of the books on Project Gutenberg and other free book sites have used this service as it's cheaper (and more effective) than using proof readers - in effect everyone who's filled in the word is a proof reader.

It also explains why some of the recaptcha words are very difficult to read!

Some of the larger comping sites also have IP detection software where if the same IP address is responsible for several 'hits' it will slow down access to that particular address or block it. It means the automated entry program becomes very inefficient and a lot of hassle for the entry company.

Sadly moves such as these tend to be expensive (except recaptcha) so only the biggest sites will invest the time and money needed.

shapala

Interesting read. Good comments. Personally, I think the only way in which competitions are run fairly is if competitions are run on a strictly once-per-IP-address only. The only way to then circumvent this factor if entering using a different name/email/address is on a different computer.

On a slightly different note, I don't mean to stir the hornet's nest, but I find it amazing that certain people can win 30-odd competitions a month consistently. Last month, I entered just over 2000 competitions for the month with 8 wins, which is more than average for me in a month (my average was 5.2 wins per month). I only ever enter myself unless there's a competition I really want, so I'll ask my wife if she can enter it when it's convenient. Therefore, it can't surely be down to luck, rather that these people are entering other members in their household, frowned upon in almost all competition T&C's, or using several email accounts. Whether they use automated entry or not, something to me doesn't ring right with so many wins on a consistent basis. If competition sites adopted a one entry per IP address, it would help to level the playing field for everyone. That's my two cents.

Anzahl

I really think some of the competitions are their own worst enemies... I entered one today where the T's & C's say "unless stated otherwise you may enter our competitions as many times as you like" and make no mention of automation or bulk entries. Unpalatabe as it might be, that to me reads like a green light for anyone with the technical ability to do multiple automated entries.

Lots of the comps I enter seem to come down to odds (most seem to be one in several hundred or one in several thousand chances of winning) and I play those odds assuming that one every several hundred to one every several thousand competitions I will win.

But if you can enter 10,000 times legitimately and there are 500 other entrants then chances are 20:1 that you'll win.

There was a Sun Christmas comp several years ago where over 180,000 entries came from the same person which was enough to cause their server to crash and prevent further entries. It came as no surprise that the individual concerned won!

jdsaint

If competition sites adopted a one entry per IP address, it would help to level the playing field for everyone

IP per person isn't always unique depending on provider, so that method has drawbacks.

Captcha is ok, but we know it's get roundable.

What isn't is easy to get round is asking for opinions etc as part of the competition (e.g. favourite item on our site), tiebreakers etc.

Lovehoney's advent where you had to click the link in an email to confirm entry was another way.

Login/register is great too.

And moving to Facebook is another way!

Jason