# How to find physical address



## GSquadron (May 11, 2011)

Hello again!
I was searching for the physical address or mac address 
of someone who is using my application. How can i find it? 
I am using limesurvey


----------



## GSquadron (May 11, 2011)

None can help here?


----------



## Deleted member 3 (May 11, 2011)

I can, but I won't because you can't wait more than 36min. Learn to be patient.


----------



## streetfighter 2 (May 11, 2011)

There is a thread on this at limesurvey's site:
http://www.limesurvey.org/en/forum/development/60296-can-physical-adress-be-added-in-a-survey

Someone mentioned it was possible with ActiveX and IE.

Also:


> Originally Posted by *goblinbox*
> 
> 
> _In IPv4, MAC addresses are only sent in packets going to other machines on a LAN; they're stripped from packets going past the gateway onto the 'net.
> ...


----------



## W1zzard (May 11, 2011)

you can do it via WMI


----------



## FordGT90Concept (May 11, 2011)

W1zzard said:


> you can do it via WMI


WMI is definitely the easiest and most reliable way to get it.  I've never heard of this LimeSurvey though so I'm not sure how exactly that would work.


----------



## GSquadron (May 12, 2011)

streetfighter 2 said:


> There is a thread on this at limesurvey's site:
> http://www.limesurvey.org/en/forum/development/60296-can-physical-adress-be-added-in-a-survey



You are right man, but that jeep is me!!!
What is WMI?


----------



## Nesters (May 12, 2011)

Aleksander Dishnica said:


> You are right man, but that jeep is me!!!
> What is WMI?



http://tinyurl.com/2cg92w7


----------



## GSquadron (May 12, 2011)

After looking the manuals for WMI it doesn't look simple to find the address
What is worse, i need to integrate it into the open source of limesurvey


----------



## W1zzard (May 12, 2011)

Aleksander Dishnica said:


> integrate it into the open source of limesurvey



what does ethernet mac address have to do with a web hosted survey software ?


----------



## GSquadron (May 12, 2011)

The meaning of this is:
Dublicated votes must be avoided, but the ip in my country is a real problem.
People get a lot of same ip and it is very dynamical. The ip i have now is the same as the ip
of another person in the meantime, from another provider. 
Only mac address can give the dublication problem a solution.
So in the survey, someone who has its computer can vote 100 times. 
This can be avoided using the mac address, so the user can vote only 1 time.
I remember in gpu-z givaways you could only sent only one candidate to win from 1 computer.


----------



## streetfighter 2 (May 12, 2011)

Aleksander Dishnica said:


> Only mac address can give the dublication problem a solution.


I disagree.

Assuming it's browser based, cookies are the answer.


Aleksander Dishnica said:


> I remember in gpu-z givaways you could only sent only one candidate to win from 1 computer.


GPU-Z runs on the localhost so it can scrape data identifying a unique computer.


----------



## W1zzard (May 12, 2011)

from the internet you can not remotely get the machine mac address (as far as i know)

to avoid duplicate votes you can try ip recording, cookies or browser fingerprinting


----------



## Kreij (May 12, 2011)

The only way that I know to accomplish this is to have the user load some kind of ActiveX control. This will not work in many cases.

There are a couple of other ways that might work (IP route comparisons, for example) but you would have to store a stupid amount of information for it to be accurate and it's not worth the effort.

You could force people to create accounts and only allow the account to vote once. This would not eliminate duplication, but it is doubtful that someone is going to make 100 acounts just to skew the results of the survey. You can always adjust the results by a statistical error average like most survey places do.

The fact that the survey is online automatically removes it from being any sort of scientifically accurate information, which is why most online surveys will have a blurb that says, "Survey results based on viewer response, this is not a scientific survey."

Yes, I've gleefully thwarted survey accuracy when I felt a survey was totally biased in its presentation of the questions.


----------



## GSquadron (May 13, 2011)

The ActiveX control unfortunately is just for IE, not for other browsers.
I didnt know about cookies, anyway i will try to find it out.
Thank you


----------

