Spring Break
Students fool 'PINK' poll
Ashley Peskoe
Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: News
"We are a smaller school compared to a lot of the other ones that get the clothes so it's pretty cool that [we are at the top]," Snyder said.
The top five schools include Drexel University, Texas Tech University, George Mason University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michigan State University.
Our neighbor, University of Pennsylvania, is currently ranked at 73.
Victoria's Secret took down vspink.com for a short time after its creation, and when it came back up, a CAPTCHA was put in place, which was added to prevent automated voting, according to Plunkett.
According to http://www.leapinghare.co.uk/help/glossary.html, a CAPTCHA is: "An image containing a numerical or alphabetic code that can normally only be read and interpreted by a human. It is used to verify a form or other log in on a web site to prevent computers from spamming the form."
"If we were somehow to figure out a way to get past what they did now, that would be hacking, but no one has done that," Plunkett said.
According to Robert D'Ovidio, an assistant professor for the department of culture and communications who teaches courses in the Criminal Justice department including Introduction to Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Theft, the CAPTCHA is not fool-proof. However, it is probably the most prevalent way of securing this type of system.
Other ways to filter votes can include looking at IP or Mac addresses to block repeated votes from the same address, according to D'Ovidio.
Currently, messages appear on the Victoria's Secret voting web site that state, "Automated votes will not be counted" and "You can only vote once a day."
"That was not there when we started; we checked that because we didn't want to get ourselves disqualified. There were no rules, so we didn't break any rules," Plunkett said.
No one from Victoria's Secret media relations was available for comment; an e-mail and phone calls were not returned.
The top five schools include Drexel University, Texas Tech University, George Mason University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michigan State University.
Our neighbor, University of Pennsylvania, is currently ranked at 73.
Victoria's Secret took down vspink.com for a short time after its creation, and when it came back up, a CAPTCHA was put in place, which was added to prevent automated voting, according to Plunkett.
According to http://www.leapinghare.co.uk/help/glossary.html, a CAPTCHA is: "An image containing a numerical or alphabetic code that can normally only be read and interpreted by a human. It is used to verify a form or other log in on a web site to prevent computers from spamming the form."
"If we were somehow to figure out a way to get past what they did now, that would be hacking, but no one has done that," Plunkett said.
According to Robert D'Ovidio, an assistant professor for the department of culture and communications who teaches courses in the Criminal Justice department including Introduction to Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Theft, the CAPTCHA is not fool-proof. However, it is probably the most prevalent way of securing this type of system.
Other ways to filter votes can include looking at IP or Mac addresses to block repeated votes from the same address, according to D'Ovidio.
Currently, messages appear on the Victoria's Secret voting web site that state, "Automated votes will not be counted" and "You can only vote once a day."
"That was not there when we started; we checked that because we didn't want to get ourselves disqualified. There were no rules, so we didn't break any rules," Plunkett said.
No one from Victoria's Secret media relations was available for comment; an e-mail and phone calls were not returned.
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nbc10
posted 11/19/08 @ 11:58 PM EST
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/It_s_No_Secret__Victoria_was_Duped_Philadelphia.html
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