Hi,
I am working on a little script that reports links to me and them mail me the results. Now obviously, I don't want flooded with emails. So I created a table in my database and when the link is reported 5 times as inappropriate, I will be emailed.

So when 5 users click on the "report" button, I get emailed with the details on the inappropriate link.

I want to make this a little more secure. What if one user clicks on the link 5 times? This would be inaccurate data. Therefore, how can I make sure that each report submission is from a unique IP address.

Thanks.

I hate to be a killjoy, but if someone did actually want to damage your website they would most likely be going via multiple proxys (so their IP may change constantly). I suggest though you put the logger near the end of your file so if a user does resubmit before the page is done their should not be a problem.

IP addresses should not be used for tracking like that b/c they can change by ISPs each time a page is loaded. If the users are logged in, then you could store their user id. If not logged in, then you could assign them a cookie code which gets stored.

You won't find a perfect solution unless you require all users to be logged in, but you can filter out a lot of unwanted reports.

Drop a cookie in thier cache that contains the number of times they have clicked and date stamp it! If you do this right they can click to thier hearts content but once they hit the quota they will be ignored.