Topic: Discussion on buying/selling accounts/users actively seeking possible bought acc (Read 1291 times)

Thread is going to be locked now as promised. If anyone feels like they need to have it opened to make a contributing comment, feel free to send me a pm and I will unlock it for you. I appreciate everyone who contributed to the topic.

I really do understand your views and the views of others that say those from underprivileged backgrounds should or should not receive a tag based on their reason for buying the account. As there would be almost zero chance in ascertaining the truth from the account buyer in the verification process, it would be an impossible task trying to determine.

There is no guarantee greed will not get the better of any person when he/she/they control multiple alt-accounts. If they feel they can do it once and get away with enrolling once in a signature campaign then they will probably try to do it again. In the end they will try to enrol as many accounts as possible on as many signature campaigns as possible therefore the pity and mitigation factors rightly disappear.

Maybe this is one of those conversation that will continue to be had many years from now unless things change and there is solid consensus about how to treat account buying and selling.

Having multiple accounts is allowed, so I cannot really be upset about a person owning and using multiple accounts. The place I start to have an issue is when cheating comes into the scenario. If they have 1 in stake, 1 in duelbits, 1 in a mixer campaign etc, then it's fine. We all know that's not the case because it has been proven over the years that too many try to cheat.

Let's say they own 25 accounts and somehow manage to get them all in stakes sig campaign. That's 4k a week they could earn. 16k a month. We really have no way of detecting them unless people start searching. So it's a small fortune they can earn and live like kings in their countries.

So, while i'm neutral in some cases I can see why others are way against it. How do we make it better? That's the big question and when you break it down the answer is probably just don't allow sales.

I understand your perspective but what you said was about having one account would be acceptable to you because the user/purchaser could really need that signature campaign income. If they do not stop at one (as you mentioned) then what would you say or think about the account buyers/sellers in that scenario?

I will not be arguing against that scenario at all and it will also act as a perfect deterrent.

If someone manages to get away without getting caught, then they will continue to use that account and post away to earn signature and bounty campaign income. They will probably avoid wanting to be detected/associated with other accounts therefore will conduct themselves in a non-nefarious manner and will probably not be a nuisance around here.

It is not only about the alleged hacking. We just do not know what numbers are involved who end up not receiving payment for their old accounts that they stopped using. I presume buyers make deals to buy the associated email address and email password as well as account password and also a signed message from a known address stating change of new address in order to try to brush off any accusation of account trading.

There are no known or accurate statistics related to account trading or account farming therefore we do not know the actual scale of the impact it is having on the forum we all have a vested interest in protecting.

I don't blame the managers. Truth is, there are no community guidelines and some of the DT members made negative tag so cheap that these days having one or two negative tag is in fact prestigious. An account without negative tag looks like an average account LOL

Solution seems nice but implementing it means forum staffs need their involvement. It's not unknown to all of us that the forum authority do not moderate such things.

Indeed CryptopreneurBrainboss's offer is the most lenient solution to this problem. When implemented would surely discourage account sales because it will no longer be profitable.
But then, there are these things about the moderators;

• They are not willing to take up controversial duties such as discovering whether or not an account was bought. This is like the same situation as moderating scam. It's gonna be tedious and it should better remain in the hand of the DT members.
• Again, most times moderators don't base their decisions and judgement with evidences not found in this forum. A clear evidence of account buying and selling should either come from telegram chats or other platforms and not from this forum. This will pose another difficulty for moderators

For the time of a natural activity growth for that rank and getting the same number of merits? Then we just can let the one to start with a new account without any marks in trust so he can get his rank a natural way, because it will be easier then to give moderators another job of monitoring the activities of violators.

I'm not really against account buyers by themselves. Main problem is that it motivates hackers to steal someone else's accounts to sell them. And tolerance to that can lead to adverse effects. So account buying should be discouraged to reduce demand on hacked accs to buy. If the one will decide to start again and account buying was the only dark spot in his history then he can start from scratch I think, with clean trust.

Golden words and your opinion just reflect the opinion of a person from the local section of those people, because of which this topic was created.
It's great to see you support your fellow citizens, and of course, it's great to see those who are trying to learn and start their journey here on the forum on their own. Your opinion shows agreement that people should grow themselves.
But again, we disagree with Yahoo62278, saying that it is normal to have the desire to earn some money here on the forum to support the family, but everyone needs money. Why should someone jump over their heads and be proven to have multiple accounts when others diligently pursue their dreams on their own?
When it comes to fairness, Brainboss's offer is the perfect solution. Caught accounts, with proof that the account is not real with the owner, must be banned from wearing a signature, if not forever, then for any sufficient period so that the person can prove his interest in the forum.

I am skeptical about the purpose of purchasing an account, as I fail to see any reasonable justification for it. It seems that some individuals may acquire such accounts solely to attain a higher rank for signature campaigns and subsequently ask questions on forums as if they were inexperienced newbies, while possessing an abundance of merits that are difficult to refute. However, I have never participated in such discussions nor made any posts related to them. I would appreciate it if the forum moderators continue to discourage this behavior. Furthermore, I believe that most account trades are susceptible to hacking, as the original owner's email address is still linked to the account.

I don't necessarily agree with account sales, but I see why some users might want to buy an account. Stake pays high ranking accounts around $160 per week, which in some countries is considered as being pretty good money. Building an account from the ground up would take a user nearly 2 years to be able to earn that kind of money. If that was the only reason the account was bought, and there was no positive trust attached to the account then i'm ok with it. I'm not against anyone making money. The issue there is many account buyers are not going to stop at just 1 account, they would purchase or farm tens or hundreds of accounts and essentially cheat campaigns.

Then you toss in those that would look to purchase an account with lots of trust to try and pull off a big scam. That could be anything from an ICO scam, borrowing/lending scam, or opening a scam gambling website. It might be better to not allow sales IDK.

I pretty much agree with your sentiments but the question that needs to be asked is: What is the solution?

If members sign up, build up their rank through contributing in the forum and receive merits along the way they are surely going about things in the correct manner whereas those buying accounts either purely for signature campaign income or for nefarious purposes are not.

If the deterrent of tagging sold/traded accounts is taken away or is deemed to be unreasonable by the majority (or stops being the norm), what can replace it in order to minimise the numbers?

Like you said in the part of this post which I snipped out(by mistake though), I think I am in agreement with your opinion on this issue of bought, sold, or hacked accounts.

In my own personal opinion, I would say that an account that has already gained a trust should never exchange hands in what ever form, be it sold or hacked, if at any time it is discovered that the account exchanged hands, it is appropriate to negatively Tag such account, whether it was sold or hacked, simply because (like you said,) there is a high chance that the account wil be used to scam other users..

But if it is discovered that an account with zero trust exchanges hands,  the circumstances that brought about the account exchanging hands should be looked into, if the account was sold by the owner, then a neutral trust is more appropriate, and if somehow, we find out that the owner of the sold account has another account(s), then those account(s) should be negatively tagged, since he or she is guilty of account farming.
But in a situation where the account in question was hacked, straight negative trust should be awarded to the account, until the real owner is able to reclaim ownership of his or her account back, then the negative trusts can be either deleted or turned to neutral..

This is my opinion on this matter.

Accounts buy is really a big, big shame. People buying an account should not get a reward by putting it into a signature campaign, such accounts should be trashed right away by negative feedback.
It is very hard for new members to earn a substantial amount of Merit for receiving a high rank. All Newbies have to earn a Merit for unique post.
People buying an account should get socially isolated and a negative feedback is overdue.
Shame on bought accounts.
Bought accounts are illegitimate.
We do not support it.

People mind are already made up but since we're just sharing opinions on this thread, this is mine, previously, it was assumed that when accounts change hands through buying, it was to scam people on the forum with the reputation the account had with the previous owner but from the looks of things now, scamming isn't much of the threat on the forum anymore as people are getting more educated and informed. In recent days accounts now change hands through account buying for the purpose of earning through signature campaign or bounties. So how about we focus on removing those privilege from the accounts caught for this offense and this way we won't be destroying the accounts.

The moderates could disactivate the accounts when reported just as they did with plagiarism offenders that were found to be quality contributors of the forum. They can make the account not qualified to participate in signature or avatar campaign since the tagging doesn't stop them from joining campaigns as we have managers that doesn't care about our community guidelines and this current punishment just turns those accounts into spammers as I have noticed with lots of tagged bought accounts. Also to clear the air, I'm not supporting accounts buying but suggesting we try something else or isn't it the reason behind this thread creation @yahoo62278?

The page only gives history of latest 7 days. I am interested to see post per week before a date x and after the same date. Not much important though.

Be careful drawing conclusions from this: it looks like you have many local boards on ignore, which means you don't see all of his (first) posts.