[CCF] FW: [CQ-Contest] Fishy spots in WPX SSB

[jukka.klemola at nokia.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext David Robbins K1TTT [mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net]
> Sent: 11 April, 2003 22:54
> To: reflector cq-contest
> Subject: RE: [CQ-Contest] Fishy spots in WPX SSB
> 
> 
> > Look, folks....there is NO way to police spotting. There are local
> VHF/UHF
> > packet nets, local VHF/UHF voice nets, many telenets & the 
> ICQ nets on
> the
> > internet.  Best thing to do is to take away the "assisted" catagory,
> > period.
> >
> 
> it is not the 'assisted' category that is the problem.  The 
> problem are
> abusers who enter in any category where the contest sponsors have
> forbidden self spotting, or any use of packet at all, and who 
> then break
> the rule by spotting themselves.  
> 
> As seen in this thread there are some ways to detect POSSIBLE 
> abusers by
> studying patterns in network spots.  Determining who is 
> actually putting
> in the spots is more of a problem... there are 3 distinct cases that
> must be examined...
> 1. rf users... anyone can use any call in a tnc with no way to verify
> who is really there.  The only way to track this is for the 
> local sysop
> to know who normally uses their node and compare signals, 
> user patterns,
> etc...  some dumb users have been caught doing this because they
> disconnect from the node using one call, change their tnc, 
> reconnect, do
> something bad, disconnect, then reconnect with their real call... do
> this enough times and it gets pretty obvious who is the abuser.
> 2. telnet users...  the sysop of all telnet accessible nodes 
> can see the
> ip address of all the users.  By comparing ip addresses of suspect
> spotters to normal users you can fairly easily match up 
> abusers with the
> suspect spots.  Even users with dynamic ip addresses can be fairly
> easily matched up as the addressed don't change every time and are
> normally out of a fairly small block of numbers that the isp uses for
> dialup numbers.
> 3. dxsummit spots... so far I have been unable to get any 
> response from
> their sysops when I have requested ip addresses that they say they log
> for every spot.  It would be nice if they appended the ip address to
> each spot on the web page or on spots shown on the search pages.  This
> is done in other dx chat web pages like magicband and 50prop.  this
> would make it instantly traceable and remove that anonymous 
> user factor
> that makes it such a target of abuse.  It may be worthwhile to exclude
> dxsummit spots from the rest of the network until they make this data
> available.
> 
> As far as eliminating spots completely...  Spotting networks were
> created by contesters to allow club members to help each 
> other.  The use
> of them by dxers was an afterthought as contesters who set up 
> the nodes
> realized that in order to build a reliable network they had 
> to keep the
> nodes on 24/7 or risk losing their frequencies to other 
> packet users....
> I know in my case if spotting networks were disallowed in contests I
> would shut my node down as it would no longer serve any purpose for
> me... and I know there are many other contesters who would do 
> the same.
> 
> 
> David Robbins K1TTT
> e-mail: mailto:k1ttt at arrl.net
> web: http://www.k1ttt.net
> AR-Cluster node: 145.69MHz or telnet://dxc.k1ttt.net
>  
>  
> 
> 
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