Complete noob needing advice...

[Zoobiz]

Hi,

I'd be so grateful if anyone can offer any advice on the following: - apologies if my terminology makes you laugh - my background is project management rather than programming...

I'm trying to route people from a generic link on a single location, to a survey where only those who clicked on the link (from this single specific location) would be able to complete a survey. (i.e I don't want anyone to be able to circulate the url where the actual survey is, and don't want anyone to be able to complete a survey unless they clicked on the link from this single specific location (and what makes it more complex is that this location is not on a website... it will be circulated on a document).

Does this even sound possible? if so would it be incredibly complex to programme this? could it be done by a cookie being downloaded when people click on the initial link and only those with a cookie get into the survey. Then as long as the link location is hidden, nobody else would be able to do the survey?.

/desperate rambling.

[ht1815]

How about password protecting the survey and communicating the password in the document you mention?

Writing a cookie wouldn't work, I think, because you can't write it at the point of clicking the link; you'd have to write it when they got to the page. But, at that point, anyone getting to the page will get the cookie, thus defeating the purpose.

You can't really prevent people from getting to URLs. You've got to secure what's there from unwanted access. The password will do that. It will be as secure as the people to whom you send the document make it.

[Zoobiz]

How about password protecting the survey and communicating the password in the document you mention?

Writing a cookie wouldn't work, I think, because you can't write it at the point of clicking the link; you'd have to write it when they got to the page. But, at that point, anyone getting to the page will get the cookie, thus defeating the purpose.

You can't really prevent people from getting to URLs. You've got to secure what's there from unwanted access. The password will do that. It will be as secure as the people to whom you send the document make it.

Thanks. Unfortunately I'm not sure if password would work either as people could just distribute the password to other people (and we can't supply individual documents for each person). And people will be paid to do the survey, so there will be the incentive to try to cheat the system...

Is there any way of us allocating a user id / password (which the user doesn't even see) between them clicking the link and arriving at the survey? (could we create a database of valid user id / passwords, and each time someone clicks on the link a user id is appended to the e-mail address so they end up at survey/123456.com, and the next person ends up at survey/345678.com etc?