IP Ban for Ratings Abuse

Posted by on May 10, 2011 in Updates

IP Ban for Ratings Abuse

Visitor-submitted lender ratings are important to us. They help borrowers make intelligent loan purchase decisions, help us remove bad lenders from our comparison pages and add substantial value to our site.

That’s why we monitor for ratings abuse and have a zero tolerance policy.

Yesterday, we discovered ratings abuse on two of our posts. One lender’s rating suddenly skyrocketed and another got an undeserved thrashing.

We removed the votes from our database. We also had to ban a user’s IP address. Here’s what happened and how we dealt with the abuse.

The first abuse occurred on May 9th, 2011. A lender received a total of nine (9) votes of “5″ (excellent) within a very short period of time (8 minutes). Based on historic ratings data, website traffic analysis and other criteria, we deemed these votes to be abuse.

We removed the votes from our database and added the user to our watch-list. We will be monitoring this post for future abuse.

The second abuse was more insidious and harder to detect. A user gave a lender seventeen (17) votes of “1″ (poor) over a longer period of time (several months). Based on various factors, we’ve deemed this abuse to be malicious in nature.

We removed the votes from our database. The user’s IP address has been permanently banned and will never be able to access this site again. Subsequent attempts to abuse our rating system will be met with further actions.

The integrity of our rating system is of utmost importance to us. We will protect it like a bear protects her cubs.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

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