Tracking Computers in an Online Game

Question

So i am running into a problem with people making multiple accounts to make there account better with more resource in game.

So my dilemma is, Many users go thru proxys or NATd info so some legimated users would be banned if i only have 1 user per ip.

Is there a way (with Javascript and PHP) to Get a uniq identifier specific to a computer (without Hardware changes, computer hardware change probably would change the identifier).

Any idea or comments would be much appericated

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(The following was revived from a response made by Paul, but deleted by another for being out of place.)

I cant change the client to much because its a browser based game so getting the hwid would be possible. But how with JS or PHP.

Adding timers and restrictions to prevent transfers are in place but doesnt stop them entirely there is an option to email for an IP exception. but that is slow an tedious. Im wondering if there is a definitive to generate a specific id or identifier for a specific computer (Not ip based) that would make it so multiple accounts cant be logged in from the same computer but can be logged in from the same ip

Answer 1

As we are talking about a different account, probably on a different IP and client, you cannot easily find out clone accounts.

You can go for two more heuristic and gameplay options

1. As suggested before (by @dqhendricks), divide your resources and implement your sharing etc in such a way that you can't easily help your other account with every new account. Make finding other accounts in the beginning hard/impossible, make shareable resources a higher level feature etc. Downside is that this changes the gameplay, it doesn't have to be desireable.
2. You can perform heuristics on behaviour. There can be specific behaviour that is unwanted: only interaction with 1 other account etc. You could tweak some of the variables etc, but you could easily see suspicious behaviour. Make some sort of 'balance' calculation. Most ingame interactions have some sort of balance. Ofcourse, better players may have a good deal because they know more, or the other way around: they make a bad deal to help smaller players. But when one player only gives and never takes, it's "helping" without acutally playing itself: that might mean it's a clone

Everything with ip-adresses or client-information ($_SERVER) etc is worthless in this case as far as I'm concerned..