Manual F5 now being detected as Multi-Hit?

[K2SO]

11 minutes ago, somecoolusername said:

Well this is the question - are they locking out people that are manually refreshing, and just doing so very fast?

I wasn't trying for tickets today so I have no idea.

I believe so. I was trying for a friend, and I did get locked out like this thread said, but I was far too tired to care. I figured the page had just glitched, so waited for it to refresh!

[DeanoL]

 

16 minutes ago, somecoolusername said:

Even if they are buying tickets for themselves, rather than touting, the system is supposed to be as 'fair' as possible, ie everyone competing on a level playing field. If using software designed to send thousands of requests per minute, blocking up the servers, it renders the system unfair. 

Yeah, some people probably have faster fingers than others, but they are still competing on more or less the same basis. 

Part of it is not wanting to disadvantage people with slower internet connections though, I thought? If you pages take two seconds to load every refresh you already have half the chance of someone who can refresh every second?

[dentalplan]

31 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Part of it is not wanting to disadvantage people with slower internet connections though, I thought? If you pages take two seconds to load every refresh you already have half the chance of someone who can refresh every second?

They're not trying to advantage or disadvantage anyone. It's to stop their servers crashing from incessant, seemingly mindless refreshing. It's basically a speed bump.

Honestly, I know people are passionate about this being the reason they didn't get through or something but the penalties would be more severe if there was suspicion of multi-hit software. All we've got 'confirming' it is that this thing happens when you refresh 60 times (which can easily be overcome after a few seconds), a lot of people didn't get to a holding page (as per usual) and that those people refreshed quickly (because everyone does).

Reason I'm bothered about the perpetuation of it is because it's gonna develop into one of those factoids bandied about and next sale (eighteen months away - yikes!) people will be going "if you refresh too quickly you can't get tickets" and freak each other out for no good reason.

[parsonjack]

7 hours ago, dentalplan said:

They're not trying to advantage or disadvantage anyone. It's to stop their servers crashing from incessant, seemingly mindless refreshing. It's basically a speed bump.

Honestly, I know people are passionate about this being the reason they didn't get through or something but the penalties would be more severe if there was suspicion of multi-hit software. All we've got 'confirming' it is that this thing happens when you refresh 60 times (which can easily be overcome after a few seconds), a lot of people didn't get to a holding page (as per usual) and that those people refreshed quickly (because everyone does).

Reason I'm bothered about the perpetuation of it is because it's gonna develop into one of those factoids bandied about and next sale (eighteen months away - yikes!) people will be going "if you refresh too quickly you can't get tickets" and freak each other out for no good reason.

Good points well made.  Thanks.

I think we can put this one to bed now (or for 18 months at least....).   There is some 'characteristic' as described in the system now, and we can only assume it is there for good reason, and protecting the server tier from heavy demand or helping those with low bandwidth are good shouts.

Apologies if my raising this has induced any adverse panic, or freaked anyone out (you are right that such discussion often does), it was certainly not the intention, whereas awareness of the scenario, and the consequent ability to work around it and maximise chances for a ticket in the next sale, was.

[mr jolly]

The f5 key on my laptop has been broken since 2013 (the only key on the friggin laptop that doesn't) so I've just been manually refreshing with the mouse,one click 1/2seconds and it's worked every time. I think like people have already pointed out that as long as you wait until the next page has loaded there's no panic as to how many times you refresh. And besides how does the server differentiate between multi hit software and quick f5 fingers?

By the way does anyone else think it gets to the stage where its trying to connect you because you can see it's taking about 10 seconds in between refreshing,like you almost feel it trying for you? It doesn't always connect but you know that you are damn close!

[mcshed]

23 hours ago, parsonjack said:

 

I totally agree ref the app thing....but it's a bit worrying that human attempts can be ambushed.  How fair is it to handicap those with a quick technique?  I'm watching the London Marathon now and it looks to me like those who have practiced the most and have the best technique are all at the front....

Why should the system favour those with the best technique?

[Stu H]

I've written a bit about possible SeeTickets tech solutions in the past, but it's a guess based on what I do for a living.

I work for a big website and we get hit by millions of bots a day; automated scrapers trying to get the data on our site. We use a third party solution which checks for non-human behavior and you can set certain thresholds; amount of clicks per minute is one of them. However, we set it pretty high! 60 clicks a minute for a site like SeeTickets would be a poor level to set it at.

If thresholds are exceeded, we also do different things per market. You might get a Captcha if we *think* you're a bot but can't be 100% sure. We rarely completely block real humans.

SeeTickets must have bot protection in place, whether they've got a third party solution or built something themselves. If they're going to set click limits, they should really provide a message.

The problem is (and this isn't defending SeeTickets choices), bots are becoming ever more clever, harnessing many IP addresses and mimicking human behaviour. With the right scripting knowledge, you could probably nab Glastonbury tickets!

[The Placid Casual]

On 4/23/2017 at 10:15 AM, parsonjack said:

I'm pretty quick with the F5 finger, and if I focus I can easily F5 in less than a second

@parsonjack never fails to reach the hotseat in Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

[Thunderstruck]

I can still get the holding page now refreshing 60 or more times in under 1 minute. Then it won't let me get the booking page for a while even with slower refreshes.

[cazzatron]

I was refreshing ridiculously fast on my chrome browser and at a slow pace on my 4G phone. (Focus on the PC, less focus on the phone) - didn't get a sniff on either.

[Penrhos]

Think I was a victim of this on main sale. Had 3 separate devices running Chrome, Edge & Firefox one with a robot refreshing at 5 second intervals (as I only have 2 hands). none got past holding page. They would all originate from the same IP-Address. So does that mean if you have multiple devices on the same broadband connection your more likely to be blocked?

Thursday resale I was stuck at work so used the corporate broadband and collared two of my work colleagues to manually F5 on their PC's and had tickets in the bag at 18:02.

Sunday I had 2 PC's one direct with 5 second auto refresh and another via TOR spoofing my IP as if in Germany. got to booking page on my PC but crashed out on payment page then stuck at holding page until sold out.

[Stu H]

18 minutes ago, Penrhos said:

Think I was a victim of this on main sale. Had 3 separate devices running Chrome, Edge & Firefox one with a robot refreshing at 5 second intervals (as I only have 2 hands). none got past holding page. They would all originate from the same IP-Address. So does that mean if you have multiple devices on the same broadband connection your more likely to be blocked?

Thursday resale I was stuck at work so used the corporate broadband and collared two of my work colleagues to manually F5 on their PC's and had tickets in the bag at 18:02.

Sunday I had 2 PC's one direct with 5 second auto refresh and another via TOR spoofing my IP as if in Germany. got to booking page on my PC but crashed out on payment page then stuck at holding page until sold out.

 

Our bot blocking would consider a block because you have 3 browsers running the same query from the same IP. It can also check for multiple tabs.

*Generally* (and this is by no means a definitive answer!), I have obtained tickets more quickly when I've been at work on our network, refreshing the same tab once every few seconds.

[parsonjack]

1 hour ago, mcshed said:

Why should the system favour those with the best technique?

I'm not saying they should be favoured, more so that those who have done a bit of research on how to maximise their chances shouldn't be penalised as long as they stay within the limits of human capability only.  As someone said in the other thread, its no secret that tickets are difficult to get...and there's no shortage of information freely available on how to get an edge if you really want to go.

Maybe I have it all wrong and next year we'll see the Kenyan's being asked to run in clogs...or wellies...to give other nations a chance over 27 miles. 

[Penrhos]

Hopefully Seetickets clear the IP-Address blacklist once the sale has finished otherwise if you get blocked once then you'll always be blocked...

Out blacklist at work contains hundreds of IP-Addresses so I'm sure we block some legitimate users (where IP's are being re-used by ISP's).

[mcshed]

30 minutes ago, parsonjack said:

I'm not saying they should be favoured, more so that those who have done a bit of research on how to maximise their chances shouldn't be penalised as long as they stay within the limits of human capability only.  As someone said in the other thread, its no secret that tickets are difficult to get...and there's no shortage of information freely available on how to get an edge if you really want to go.

Maybe I have it all wrong and next year we'll see the Kenyan's being asked to run in clogs...or wellies...to give other nations a chance over 27 miles. 

In a marathon your trying to see who is fastest in a ticket sale you aren't trying to sell tickets to the folk with the fastest fingers.

Any restrictions on multiple refreshing will be about helping their overloaded system not crash and not finding Johnny Quickfingers' remarkable refresh rate.

[Gregcharlie]

2 hours ago, Thunderstruck said:

I can still get the holding page now refreshing 60 or more times in under 1 minute. Then it won't let me get the booking page for a while even with slower refreshes.

 

2 hours ago, cazzatron said:

I was refreshing ridiculously fast on my chrome browser and at a slow pace on my 4G phone. (Focus on the PC, less focus on the phone) - didn't get a sniff on either.

This is what worries me. People with overenthusiasm who would in previous years have been rewarded are now going to be sent to the supposed 'holding page' which is actually just an endless black hole of nothingness with no registration entry page at the end of it because they've actually been refereshing too quickly with no break.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Gregcharlie

[Thunderstruck]

I don't think it's a case of you being blocked, but it looks like there's a limit on the number of times they let you refresh in a set time period.

[siblin]

9 hours ago, parsonjack said:

Apologies if my raising this has induced any adverse panic, or freaked anyone out (you are right that such discussion often does), it was certainly not the intention, whereas awareness of the scenario, and the consequent ability to work around it and maximise chances for a ticket in the next sale, was.

I think its a good bit of feedback, and would seem to make sense.

[billum]

40 minutes ago, naughtygeorgie said:

I got through using Internet Explorer, my OH had a load of tabs open in chrome that I wasn't to touch so was stuck with Explorer.

I refreshed quite leisurely in terms of f5 bashing, I was refreshing the page sporadically from about 8.20am, then probably once a second or 2 from 8.50am

Got through in 3 mins

Make of all that what you will

I think See 'strongly discourage' multiple tabs open in the same browser, which it does appear can be detected at their servers (or in a layer before their servers), so perhaps you getting through on your single windows was not as unlikely as it may seem!

[carlosj]

Just now, Scruffylovemonster said:

I had it on chrome and IE but then it eventually worked. 

You had that red text, even before the sellout?

[carlosj]

2 minutes ago, Scruffylovemonster said:

Got it at 0905. Thought it was cos they must've had tickets but then it did it for another set of tickets. Kept retrying and on third or forth attempt it worked. 

Thank chuff for that, thought I'd messed up at my end, although never did get it to work.