How to you prevent someone from getting a "new free trial period" by just creating a new login?

Posted by Clay Nichols on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by Clay Nichols
Published on 2014-06-12T21:54:33Z Indexed on 2014/06/13 3:42 UTC
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I am considering several options for the Trial version of our web app.

The one I favor the most is the classic trial period. Of course, it's a LOT easier for someone to hack this system. They can defeat the various methods of fingerprinting the user, thusly:

  • Browser cookie: Clear their cookies completely (or just for our site) or use a different device. Although Evercookie may help with the former.
  • Email address: Create a new login (with a new email address)

I'm going to monitor things for a while and just see how it goes. If it's a problem I'll consider requiring a credit card number matched to a name and billing zip code. Each such "ID constellation" would be considered one user. Someone could still have multiple credit card numbers but we could flag the same name+zipcode coming up again.

Are there any better ways to do this?

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