"Easier than likes on social networks": how you can promote any petition on Change.org

The Meduza publication, recognized in Russia as a foreign agent *, accompanies each of its publications with a hyperlink to the Change.org website.

The link leads to a petition demanding the repeal of the law on foreign agents.

The petition, published in mid-September, collected more than 110 thousand signatures in the first ten days, but then the dynamics of the collection of votes fell sharply.

Medusa is not alone in her call.

On October 12, together with other media outlets such as Dozhd **, OVD-Info ***, Mediazona, Echo Moskvy and Novaya Gazeta, Meduza held the Agents of People marathon against of the aforementioned law.

About six hours live and on various Internet resources, citizens were urged to sign the petition on the Change.org website. 

The organizers did not hide the purpose of the marathon - to collect 200 thousand signatures under the petition.

But even the involvement of well-known Russian journalists and popular musicians on the air of "People's Agents" did not bring the desired result.

The six-hour action collected about 7 thousand votes.

At the time of publication of this material, less than 189 thousand people signed the petition.

Test purchase

A simple search query on the Internet - "Change.org cheat" - produces dozens of commercial offers.

The average price for one vote is 3.5 rubles.

Such services assure users that drawing attention to their petition on Change.org "is impossible without outside interference."

Moreover, on the platform itself, you can find a petition titled “Stop fake voting on Change.org”.

Its author complains about the use of his e-mail to cheat votes, although he did not even register on the service.

RT decided to conduct an experiment - choose a petition with a small number of votes and use the services offered on the network to cheat them.

The search engine, at the very first request, issued a resource that offers to do this for a small price in a short time.

To order the service, three types of communication are offered: by e-mail, Skype and via Telegram.

The random choice fell on a petition with a dubious demand "to deprive the participants of the Miss Belarus contest of the right to take part in leading beauty contests."

At the time of our contact with the cheat service, only 199 people left their votes under the petition.

We contacted the service provider on Telegram and ordered another 300 votes for this petition.

I didn't have to wait long for an answer.

The contractor requested 3 thousand rubles (ten rubles per vote) and indicated the methods of transferring money - to a bank card or Yandex.Money wallet.

At the same time, he warned that cheating is not carried out at once - the procedure is stretched for hours or days so that the site's security systems do not recognize the intrusion.

The next day, the number of votes under the petition increased to 362. A day later, it exceeded 430. Prior to that, the petition grew by only one or two votes per day.

However, in order to throw in votes, it is not necessary to resort to the services of a third-party manipulator.

There are many tips on the net how to carry out this operation by registering different email accounts.  

We used one of the most famous email platforms that allows you to anonymize your mailbox.

As an anonymous address, the postal resource offered several options for writing mail, of which we chose the first three.

On the Change.org portal, all three mails under false names (Andrey Sidorov, Alexander Ivanov, Evgeny Petrov) were registered as a signature under one petition. 

However, it is worth noting that the portal site tracks the voter's IP address, and all three signatures are recognized as one user from one computer, one address.

Only the last signer Evgeny Petrov was taken into account.

Despite this, it turned out to be enough to visit the site from a different IP address in order to register another vote for the petition to the same anonymous mail.

The signature on the petition, left with a smartphone with a fictitious name Igor Kruglov, was recognized by the site as new.

Popular method

If you wish, you can bypass the protection of the Change.org portal very simply, Vladimir Makarov, chief specialist of the audit of the information security department of T.Hunter, said in an interview with RT.

“By itself, a petition portal does not have serious defenses.

It's easier to get signatures under a Change.org petition than likes on a social network.

To bypass the recognition of IP-addresses, services with a VPN-tool are used, of which there are a lot of them on the network, ”the expert explained.

Unlike Change.org, Intsagram will require at least a unique mobile phone number, he said. 

“Instagram and Facebook are more scrupulous about making their accounts unique, but even for them it is not very difficult to wind up any likes.

What can we say about Change.org, which believes that a unique IP address is enough to sign the petition. "

Also on russian.rt.com "I take data from the Internet, where you left it": how services work to "break through" data in Telegram

Director of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers Vladimir Zykov believes that the site is not able to protect itself from fraud. 

“Cheats on Change.org are constantly being made.

To do this, you can buy ready-made services that are provided by market specialists, or you can wind up votes yourself using different e-mail addresses, ”Zykov said in a conversation with RT.

Igor Bederov, the founder of the Internet-search company, considers voice cheating as one of the most harmful flaws of Change.org.

“Most often, cheating is carried out using bots, that is, virtual users.

These are profiles in social networks or email addresses through which registration on the site takes place.

This is incomparable with "Gosuslugi", where the passport data of a person is entered, "the expert explained.

Untrusted payment

However, cheating is not the only problem of the project.

Many users of the platform complain that Change.org is illegally debiting money from their card.

As a rule, write-off occurs in two cases.

In the first case, a person creates a petition and pays to promote it.

In the second, the write-off occurs due to the fact that the user decided to support someone else's petition.

In both cases, the bank card is linked to the site.

After that, according to users on the network, the platform, without their knowledge and consent, begins to withdraw money from the account on a monthly basis.

“I decided to support one of the petitions with a small sum of money, after which similar amounts began to flow away from my card on the sly every month,” complains one Change.org user.

- I didn’t make any auto payments.

Nobody asked for any permission to write off my money.

The issue was resolved by re-issuing a bank card.

Their support service does not respond to inquiries at all. "

Change.org explained the withdrawal of funds from users' accounts by the inattention of the users themselves.

“We have a Friends Club, a group of active Change.org users who keep the platform running with small monthly contributions.

Any user can become a member of our club.

Sometimes users promoting petitions mistakenly subscribe to the Friends Club, but in such cases the procedure is very simple: they inform us about it and we unsubscribe them within 24 hours, and the funds are fully returned, "the executor said in an interview with RT. duties of the Director of Change.org in Russia Anya Ayvazyan.

The head of the Russian-language resource also emphasized that the site is fighting against cheating.

According to her, behind each signature on the site "there is a specific person who wants to help a specific petition."

Verification of signatures, says Ayvazyan, is carried out around the clock.

• Beauty contest "Miss Belarus"

• globallookpress.com

• © Henadz Zhinkov / XinHua

Out of the legal field

However, the biggest "secret" of Change.org is not incidents with illegal write-off of money or even cheating, Igor Bederov believes.

Despite its great popularity, Change.org is not an official site for collecting signatures and has no legal force, the expert emphasizes.

“Collecting signatures on Change.org entails nothing.

This is important for understanding the legal status of the site.

In the best case, the organizers of one campaign or another, based on its results, can formally send a petition to someone, ”Bederov says.

Vadim Kudikov, a lawyer at the Human and Law legal center, explained in an interview with RT that in order to obtain the status of a collective appeal, a petition must meet a clear condition - all users need to be identified.

“Only under this condition will the petition have the status of an official appeal.

Otherwise, the authorities are not obliged to react to it.

Although it is possible to draw attention to this sensitive issue with a Change.org petition.

It is possible that officials on their own initiative will respond to this or that problem, ”the lawyer said. 

Also on russian.rt.com The Federation Council allowed the possibility of clarifying the law on foreign agents

Legal import substitution

There is a similar project in Russia to create petitions and public initiatives.

It is not as popular as Change.org, but it is legally binding.

The Russian Public Initiative (ROI) considers petitions both at the federal, regional and municipal levels, up to requests for tree planting in Samara.

This site was created by an official presidential decree in 2013.

“To vote on this resource for this or that initiative, you must log in through the portal of public services.

If for a certain period of time the petition gains more than 100 thousand votes, then it is considered by the government, ”explained Vladimir Zykov.

It takes a year to collect signatures.

If the required number of votes is collected, then the term for making a decision on the initiative is no more than two months.

Thus, government support received, for example, the idea of ​​a public initiative not to include compensation and incentive payments in the minimum wage (minimum wage).

An example at the municipal level - residents of one of the districts of Moscow have achieved the construction of a metro.

Now among the popular petitions on the ROI website is an initiative to create a "federal law on the prevention and counteraction of domestic violence, the protection and rehabilitation of its victims."

Voting on it ends on May 1, 2022. 

* Media recognized as a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 04/23/2021.

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