Salem

Dallane wrote:

Taipion wrote:

Dallane wrote:Also whats to stop people from changing their IPs? Or even Macs for that matter.

Taipion wrote:A professional approach would be, to group accounts by IP or mac adress or whatever, whereas you dont even need super smart algorithms to merge/evaluate data over long time and prevent (incredibly unlikely) false positives.
I know this can be evaded, but the effort needed to do so in larger quantity ...I'd say who'd does that deserves a present or two more.

Yes, I'm aware of what you typed. I should of quoted you instead of going with the flow of a conversation since it was mostly a response to you. Changing your IP/MAC isn't anything special and would happen if they used your idea. There is ZERO effort in this. Essentially you just re-created the same problem and taught a few people how to be a script kiddie. If he did go with that idea then he shouldn't of announced it as people wouldn't be aware of how rewards were being given out and this would be much more successful.

Taipion wrote:Therefore I would prefer more sophisticated means of identifying one PC

Dallane wrote:

Taipion wrote:Therefore I would prefer more sophisticated means of identifying one PC

How would they do this?

Taipion wrote:

Dallane wrote:

Taipion wrote:Therefore I would prefer more sophisticated means of identifying one PC

How would they do this?

You can basically uniquely identify many of the PCs components, and it is not as easy to spoof them like a mac adress (well, probably it is, but not as widely used), though, you could just use a VM and be done for this.
(that would basically bypass all that, except you say VMs don't qualify as PC for us so you get nothing )

Usually you would think of doing this for license management and such, but for that goal it is rather bad and has its shortcomings like when the user would change a part that you use to identify the PC, which would be completely unproblematic in this case as you just want to identify accounts that run on one certain PC, and not grant access to something for that one PC.

Taipion wrote:

honeymilk wrote:Even IP addresses would have its flaws since one line can have multiple users, I am only playing with my husband and we share everything so I would be all ok with that method. But other situations where players do not share everything it would cause issues again. But it might be better than going after the customer group.

I do understand how the rewards/gifts or whatever needs a system, but some people can't afford 1.99 on a game- no matter how little that will make it or break it for me, It might be the money you need for bread that week.

Well, I'd doubt someone who can afford to play salem for a few hours each week can't afford 2$ once, maybe I am wrong here but it hope not.

On the IP thing, yea, using mac adress instead or a small fingerprint of the PC would be better, yet some people might say that's too much in terms of personal data n stuff and yea it still can be evaded if you know how,
but after all there ARE ....MUCH....better ways to determine the distribution of gifts than using payment data.

If JC says he needs the money, and they are now only offering "gifts" to paying customers, that's totally OK.
(It's kicking some players in the nuts and putting salem management in a bad light, but maybe that is just what JC wants, so whatever.)
What is not OK is saying you need/want to do it this way because of reasons, that's just not right.