The check
A quick face scan proves two things: a live person is present, and this face has not already been here for this study. Same check everywhere.
The single-use credential
Each verified human is handed a credential that works exactly once. This is the part that changes shape per platform.
What the credential looks like per platform
| Platform | The credential | The platform’s own lock |
|---|---|---|
| Alchemer | A one-time password | The Login/Password action, individual one-time passwords that deactivate after use |
| Qualtrics | A single-use personal link | Invitation Only mode: the link is the key, and it dies on first open |
| Typeform, Jotform, Tally | A one-time token on the link | A hosted gate page opens the form only for a valid token, and a webhook removes anything that slips through |
| Google Forms | A one-time token in a field | A small script checks each submission and removes the bad ones |
| Your own survey stack | A one-time token | Your code asks us “is this token real and unused?” before saving |
Where this matters
The same gate works anywhere paid responses attract fake ones:- Academic research. Grant-funded studies where one duplicate respondent can poison a dataset, and where methods sections need a defensible answer to “how do you know they were real?”
- Market research firms. The screener criterion your clients are quietly asking about: are they a person, and are they unique?
- Panels and communities. One verified human per panelist, so incentive fraud stops at signup instead of in your data cleaning.
- Brand trackers and repeated waves. Uniqueness holds per wave while honest panelists breeze back in, so wave two fields faster and cleaner than wave one.
- B2B and expert interviews. High incentives attract professional fakers; a face that can only qualify once ends the repeat-expert problem.