Monday, January 24, 2011

Whrrl Cracks Down On Cheaters

Seattle-based Pelago, the firm that runs the Whrrl mobile check-in and networking service, disclosed Monday afternoon that it has discovered that people are cheating to gain points in its service, and is beginning a crackdown to reduce the practice. The firm--which awards points such as making recommendations, checking into locations, and for other efforts--said that it has discovered that there are a "small percentage" of its users who are cheating, such as checking in at places people are not, hitting "did it" on recommendations that a user hasn't actually done, and so forth. The firm said it is "very focused" on the problem and that it is making a number of changes to the Whrrl service to fix the issue. The firm did not detail what those changes are.

Pelago is not alone in dealing with cheaters on location-based check-in services: competing services such as Foursquare have had similar problems, where users were checking into the service without really having been at a location. The cheating issue on location-based check-in services has gotten worse as those companies have begun inking special deals with companies for coupons, prizes, and special offers to those checking into locations the most.

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