Cheating on foursquare is only too easy. There are two ways. One may pass by (at a range of say 200 m.), without going into the actual venue, and check-in at it. Lets call it close-by cheating. And, what is even worse, I may check-in at a venue in New York while comfortably sitting in my office couch in Madrid (hence Remote-cheating): if you don’t know how to, try http://m.foursquare.com. This cheating issue equally affects other LBS networks such as Gowalla or Kitebright. Not sure about Loopt because it is not available outside USA yet.

I agree with Todor Krecu upon the fact that for venues there is no real downside when cheating simply implies extra exposure for them, except for the fact that other players feel upset and eventually may loose interest in a somehow unreliable game. Don’t forget the game dimension of foursquare.

The worst side of cheating arises when rewards are involved. We are currently devising and developing a number of location based campaigns for the Tourism industry in Spain. The goal is to draw tourists into a Territory and, if possible, make their networked friends aware of their stay while they are actually there. They are gowalla-like trips where 10 or more venues are targeted. Engaging visitors into the game implies rewarding their check-ins with something more than social appreciation. Rewarding cheaters with actual gifts is obviously a serious threat for the goals of the campaign.

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I don’t think that avoiding close-by cheating will be technically easy. Those like Tasti D-lite (http://bit.ly/89Ky7Y) using fidelity programmes connected to Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook can make sure that their customers are actually buying before rewarding them. But Tasti D-Lite is using Foursquare as a target network not its Location Based check-in infrastructure. Foursquare is for D-Lite just a net where their customers tell their friends that they have just bought there, the same way that Twitter or Facebook echo the foursquare check-ins, and mayorships and badges.

As for stopping remote-cheating it is technically easy. It implies stopping free web check-ins, i.e., check-ins that are not properly geolocalized. Unwanted check-ins via API should also be filtered out.

The Tourism campaigns we are working on intend to promote places, tourist destinations, picturesque villages, monuments, medieval castles, Romanesque churchs and the like. The promotions require rewards in order to work. As a result, whereas close-by cheating is not a serious issue, remote cheating is a blocking threat for the campaigns.

I don’t really think that Foursquare is likely to stop remote cheating. Neither will Gowalla and the rest. Making check-ins easy is obviously more important for networking than accuracy. I even think that they are right on that. I admit that our use of Geolocation for Turism is pretty specific.

That’s why we are developing our own cheat-free platform for our Tourism campaigns. The smart-phone applications are connecting the check-ins to a campaign microsite and also to other social networks such as Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook.

Can you suggest any other way to avoid remote-cheating with foursquare? Comments welcome