Just voted again.

Yeah, this morning was the last straw. I contacted them also from the viewpoint of a retired Wildlife Biologist loving learning about their wildlife area through such wonderful photos and someone who builds and repairs computers being suspicious that the individual might be using a bot network. I said I was contacting them on behalf of ALL the people who had submitted entries and were playing by the rules and who may be the victim of a scam artist.

Hooray for everyone who is standing up for truth and justice. Hopefully the sponsors will find out how this guy gets so many votes in such a short time. Gotta be fishy. Maybe he runs a computer class and has all his students vote once a day? I could have done that and gotten 480 votes each day with my kiddies I taught all day long in our computer lab. Just sit them down, sign them in, vote to get 'extra credit' and voila.

Sure hope OUR choice wins. I'm off to vote!

And most suspicious leaning towards a bot network is that all the votes show up overnight in the wee hours.

If they can clone/hack phone numbers which appear on caller ID as real people we know on our calling list, then surely they can easily hack the contest. If this guy is legit, more power to him, but if he's scamming, then shame shame shame.

All detective work points to a scam.

FaceBook - 38 likes for his page - no likes except an occasional 1 (literally) on his posts https://www.facebook.com/DanielKGroenhofPhotography/

Twitter - 38 followers - no likes on his tweets https://twitter.com/DanGroenhof

Instagram - 25 followers https://www.instagram.com/groenhofphotography/

I have 1031 followers on Twitter, 303 FB friends and all of you. And I interact with tons of folks of twitter and my FB page daily as well as you all and I still can't average even close to his votes.

Oh well, I really do appreciate you all. I guess I'll have to wait for the universe to snack him upside the side if he's cheating.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who contacted the site about the voting. The fact that he went from hundreds of votes down to 36 back in a few days doesn't pass the smell test.

SpaceQ.

Well, it isn't just about Ana and her submissions; it's about all the beautiful photographs that were submitted by people playing by the rules. Fair is fair. I wonder if their system sent out about 400 email confirmations one night... might raise a red flag.

That's very true Drac. And truth is, there are quite a few lovely submissions. I would think they had to have sent out a bunch at one time.

Ana

Wow... got a response to my email message of concern. I was told my concerns had been forwarded to the "contest software’s technical support team and will do our best to determine whether this individual has simply promoted his entry heavily to his social media followers or has used a bot network to unfairly inflate his votes."

Oh good news Draclvr! Techs will know what is going on from the IP addresses used. If it's the SAME IP then they will know it's totally fishy. My computer guru told me that last night about IP addresses. Same IP, same computer. Hope this all gets worked out. I'm sure as Ana found, his 'social media' friends are few and far between.

Thank you so much, Drac! It was easy enough to find his tracks and if anyone is social networking savvy they can see that his following and lack of hashtags also on Twitter put his reach at a nearly non existent level. You all are truly wonderful!

Ana

Indeed, the IP address is one of the things we use over at Mystery Manor to weed out spammers. Now and then we'll get several requests to join and they are all from the same IP address. While it's not impossible that two people from the same house would try to join, as soon as we question them, they hightail it out of there and we never hear from them again!

And, yes, I did mention the dearth of social media contacts for the individual!

Drac, If they use a bot will it show same address or can it generate individual ones?

I see online there a gazillion different email generators. A whole world I never knew existed. I didn't click past the google search page results though because I have a fear of viruses.

Confirmed, got the same response that Drac did.

It is fairly easy to hide or change up your IP address. If he's using a bot, he might be savvy enough to work through a proxy service, but that in itself should be a give-away to a decent technical support group.

It's funny how he got it near me and now is behaving normally. I'm waiting for him to trail behind and then before the contest closes, pass me up. Another clear sign to me that I think he cheated to get caught up. Fingers crossed he gets called out, not because I don't want him to win, but because cheaters don't deserve to win.

Yup, what Trail said. However, the 400+ votes overnight the first night? Big red flag.

I was thinking the same exact thing - now just a few normal votes after the 800+ votes in what... 3 days? Yeah, something smells really bad here. Hopefully they have a good enough software person on this contest because it wouldn't take much to sniff this out. While his picture is fine, it just doesn't have the composition and quality of Ana's pictures or many, many of the other submissions. The dragonfly one is a great picture... the Heron? Not so much.

Well, we'll see what happens. So glad we contacted them though... fair is fair.

Bravo Drac & Trail.

I agree, I keep looking expecting him to pass her up... other than the first response from them stating that they will look into this I have not heard anything else from them. The fact there were more than one reporting this I hope they really take a good look at the first 600 votes! Like you said Drac... his picture just doesn't have the quality nor composition.... we shall see.... I get to vote in 45 minutes :-)

I love going to the site and seeing Ana in the lead.


I can't vote until almost 9:00 PM.

I can't vote until later tonight either! I would even feel bad if this was cheating that the other photos would be pushed out of 2nd or 3rd places. The dragonfly one is so nice too.

Drac, There is no second or third prize for fan votes, only first place. There is a jury that votes for the best 3 photos based on composition and skill. On that one, there is no cheating, hopefully. The voting is just for fan favorite.

I still say now his voting is normal and he will maintain that until the end and he will spam it to pass me up. I can just feel it...

Ah, I didn't look that closely on the contest itself. I can feel the same thing in my bones too - well, maybe if they have been alerted, they are watching too.