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Tracking content access

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 10:51 pm
by rtlm
Hi all,
I am developing an application which will post links to a website. I want to ensure that visitors to that website are only allowed to click each link to get its content once. Any subsequent clicks should not deliver the content. To track which users have visited the links I am planning to keep a log of IP addresses in a database which can be searched to determine if a particular IP address has already clicked a particular link. My problem is that someone who does not have a static IP address through their ISP can potentially be given a different IP the following day, and then revisit the website and click to get the content again. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? Obviously I have no control over a users IP address so does anyone know of another way to track who has accessed which content?

Re: Tracking content access

Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 11:17 pm
by Christopher
Probably a using a cookie would be the easiest method.

Re: Tracking content access

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 12:07 am
by requinix
If you must be absolutely sure that someone does not get the content more than once then I'm sorry but you'll have to loosen your requirements because it's just not possible. You can settle for "make it harder to by checking a combination of variables" or "only allow it once per email address by requiring user registration" but you can't really get any more secure/reliable beyond that.

Re: Tracking content access

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 11:56 am
by Christopher
I agree. You can make it harder, but not absolutely certain.

Re: Tracking content access

Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 6:01 pm
by rtlm
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah it looks like I am going to have to just make it as hard as possible to abuse.