<aside> 💡 This feature requires additional implementation within your Survey Platform in order to secure the connection between Research Desk and your Survey. For questions, please enquire with your client success manager or message [email protected]

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Table of Contents:

Why is redirect hashing important?

• Redirect hashing is one of the few ways we can secure the redirection mechanism/connection between two systems today to prevent ghost completes.
• Without securing these connections, we allow fraudsters to take advantage of vulnerabilities and collect incentives without actually taking surveys.
• We all need to play a part (researchers, sampling platforms, and programming platforms) to help clean up the market research ecosystem and prevent fraud from happening.
• Rep Data will soon be releasing a new Research Defender module called “COMPLETE” that researchers and platforms can more easily implement to prevent ghost completes.

What is redirect hashing?

• As mentioned above, it’s the act of securing the connection between two platforms.
• Research Desk is able to support several different types of hashing to secure connections, but for the purposes of this article, we’re specifically referring to hashing between the “return” redirect from the Survey Platform back to Research Desk - this is represented by arrow #3 below. This is the main area of vulnerability from which ghost completes can stem.

Steps involved:

1. Generating Hash: When setting up a redirect connection, the Survey Programming Platform computes the hash value of the entire base redirect link, along with a secret key issued by Research Desk, using a predefined hash function (Research Desk supports SHA-256 or SHA-512 hashing algorithms).
2. Sending Hash: This hash value is then sent to Research Desk, appended to the redirect link using parameter “hk”. It serves as a secure token representing the connection.
3. Verification: Upon receiving the hash value (”hk”) and connection details, Research Desk independently computes the hash value using the same hash function - once again, the hash function is applied to the redirect link with the secret key appended. It then compares this computed hash with the received hash value.