Prevent multiple participation
Secure online surveys and polls
In general, it is difficult to avoid multiple participation. PollUnit can prevent participants from multiple voting with the help of cookie and IP checks. However, a participant from another computer can reopen the poll and vote again.
Nevertheless, there are several ways to protect your online voting from unwanted multiple participations or to reduce them.
Choose your security mechanisms depending on your target group.
Cookies
If you choose »Allow only one participation«, a cookie will be set at the participant after casting a vote. This cookie prevents further participation in the user's browser. If the user changes the browsers or deletes their cookies, they can vote again. Cookie protection therefore offers only limited security.
IP address
If you activate the IP blocker, the IP address of the participant will be blocked for further participations after a participation. For example, users of companies and universities may use the same IP address. They could then only participate once. Since the IP address can change, this method also offers only limited protection.
Account required
If you require an account, only participants who have created a PollUnit account can vote. To create an account, participants need a valid email address which will be verified by us. Only one participation per account or e-mail address is possible.
Invitation required
A very safe method is to only allow users to participate who have received an invitation. PollUnit sends e-mails with a secret code that can only be used once. For this method the participants have to log in or register with PollUnit before voting.
The necessary settings can be found in step 4 of your PollUnit Wizard.
You see, it is crucial whether you know your participants or whether they are completely unknown to you. Only if you create a voting with the setting »Invitation required« you can be sure that your invited persons can only vote exactly once.
If you share the participant link to your PollUnit, e.g. on Facebook, and you also allow unknown users who were not invited to vote, we cannot uniquely identify these users. However, we can raise the hurdle to cast a double vote.
If you have further suggestions on how we can secure your vote against multiple participation, feel free to open a feature request in our PollUnit Support Forum.