Thanks for the very useful article! I think the main problem I have with people posting answers on forums for stuff like our egg hunt is that it takes some of the fun away.
I will have a think about your suggestions for making competitions less cheatable- main problem is I don’t want to force registration, so will look into your alternative suggestions.

And thanks for linking to the hunt- I hope anyone who enters through your link doesn’t feel the need to cheat- it honestly is a lot more fun when you don’t

Naomi
Affiliate Marketing Exec (and egg hunt creator)
Firebox.com

Also be very careful when creating interactive Flash-based competitions, where the winner of the competition is the person with the highest score. It is usually easy to hack these, unless your techie thinks properly about how to stop the hacks.

A recent example of this was the “Win a holiday to Lapland” that Cosmos ran in Christmas 2007. It was an interactive Flash game promoted nationwide in the press and online. I provided instructions to Cosmos, and the Affiliate Management company, on how easy it was to hack as the top scores were a little suspicious, but maybe not quite enough to ring big alarm bells. The Firefox browser has a simple plug-in whereby you can alter the score that is posted at the end of these games, so be VERY careful with these type of competitions!

It is possible to significantly reduce the possibility of hacking Flash games with a little forethought…