Exhaust Survey

[Dag]

I have been asked to add a few questions to the survey.

http://FreeOnlineSurveys.com/rendersurvey.asp?sid=u1lc5zdk1vb9o1y653076

[MarkT]

Dag - Thanks for your work for the community - this is a good idea, along with the many others you have on your site.

Sometimes good ideas come with unintended consequences -

Maybe you should add this question:

Are you a customer or the maker of these pipes?

We have one pipe builder who has been reviewing his own pipes on the Accessory Review page using aliases  for years.  Less so lately after I called him publicly on it, and reported him to the staff.

He has already skewed your results - look at your pie charts - one set looks really suspicious, all votes 100% in the same direction, and none of the voters answered one of the questions.

Of course the above question wouldn't really help - he would just lie.  Just pointing out - you need to verify who the voters on your survey are, if you want it to be credible.  It's also easy for him to sign up on one of the many untracable free email & ISP services like juno for each phoney review - considering the value of free advertising, since this guy has no ethics it's worth his time in order to skew your results in his favor.

No I don't really have the answer on how to stop this.  I'm not a computer security expert.  But requiring an email address, then using only results from emails, ( not results from an anonymous online form) that can be traced to actual people would be a good start.

Thanks, if you care enough to give your survey some credibility instead of allowing it to be used for free advertising.

[Dag]

MarkT,
I can source each answer to a Ip address. I will check if I have several answers from the same address.
Thanks!

[MarkT]

Dag,

Good.  That's a good start.  Now such fraud will have to use several different free untracable ISP providers to spread out the sources - and there's a limited number of them.  I'd bet the IPs you find for him will be mostly linked to Juno and the like.  Unless he assumed you weren't watching IPs and used a tracable IP.

Yeah I think for true veracity you would need to use a verifiable voting concept - like using only emails linked to verifiable users, and limit one vote per user per product.

Thanks.

[Duffy]

Dag

I thought I had Two Brothers pipes (they were on the bike when I got it) but your link shows two bros as 6 into 2. Hmmm, mine are 6 into 6 and turned out at the end. If not two bros, then I donlt know what I've got.

Any guesses?

[Six Guns]

Two Brothers had 6 into 2 and 6 into 6 turned out at the ends. I had the Two Brothers 6 into 6 turned out at the ends at one time on my bike. Thats what you have.

[Dag]

Dag,

Good.  That's a good start.  Now such fraud will have to use several different free untracable ISP providers to spread out the sources - and there's a limited number of them.  I'd bet the IPs you find for him will be mostly linked to Juno and the like.  Unless he assumed you weren't watching IPs and used a tracable IP.

Yeah I think for true veracity you would need to use a verifiable voting concept - like using only emails linked to verifiable users, and limit one vote per user per product.

Thanks.

MarkT,

IP is an identifier for a computer or a device on a network. The IP address is used to identify the computers in a network. An IP address is written as four numbers separated by periods. Within a local network, the IP addresses can be assigned randomly, as long as they are unique, but over the internet you need to register the IP address.
How can you hide your IP address? Simply use a proxy, but some websites can still see your real IP address even if you use a proxy server.
BUT there are some "Hide the IP" softwares.. Than you can Hide Your Identity, Select Your IP Location, Surf Web Anonymously, Send Anonymous E-mails, Bypass Restrictions (Surf on forums in which you were banned)
Information collected via internet or by e-mails are not 100% secure.
Anyway, I've received several new responses to this survey so I will update my website during this week.
I have received some answers that are completely beyond, such as 20hk power increase only by changing the exhaust system. This kind of response I'm pouring out so they are not part of the analysis.
I would like to present an accurate picture of users' experiences, not to highlight any brand.

[MarkT]

Dag,

Glad to hear you're on top of IP & security issues, so you can take steps to prevent an
unfair bias skewing your results.  It's like an arms race - whenever security steps are
taken, there are always hackers out there to hack a way around them.  There are even
businesses that make a living from the concept - supply both sides of the issue.  The radar
detector makers for example - some of the same people who make the radar guns also
are involved in the detector technology.  Or it's the convicted hackers who then make a career
out of consulting to the antivirus companies.

[Duffy]

Two Brothers had 6 into 2 and 6 into 6 turned out at the ends. I had the Two Brothers 6 into 6 turned out at the ends at one time on my bike. Thats what you have.

Thanks Six Guns.  I thought so.