With tongue in cheek

[tractorian]

A charity I am connected with often takes part in competitions that require people to vote daily that it is their favourite charity. Not insignificant sums are given to the charities with most votes. There is a check, presumably on IP addresses, which prevents you voting more than once per day. For reasos we won’t go into here, my equipment and router are turned off for most afternoos and overnight. So, when reconnected I have a different IP address and so can vote again.

Two questions. Firstly, would it be possible, by using a VPN (and thus having different IP addresses), to vote several times a day? Secondly, as I can’t be the first to think of this,does anyone know of an ap which automates this process?

[pje16]

Fraud

[Gerry557]

Would you like my "charity" account number. Its to help those suffering from yacht poverty!

[Midsmartin]

I imagine that it would technically be possible.

There are ways of trying to detect VPNs, presumably by collecting a list of IP address ranges that they use. If they were semi-serious they could block known VPNs, making it a little trickier.

Do they also check by sending an email link to click? If not, it suggests they aren't really serious about stopping multiple voting anyway, though many people have multiple email addresses too. You could also vote from a phone with a different ip.

I think the organisers know it's open to fraud, and don't really care as it's just some way of raising more money, or raising awareness or something.