Topic: Discussion on buying/selling accounts/users actively seeking possible bought acc - page 3. (Read 1291 times)

This thread probably should have been opened many years earlier, by now they would certainly be much closer to a general consensus if that is possible for such a large number of people.


When we talk about "case by case"

If my memory serves me well, at least that's the impression I was left with, account bill gator was also bought/sold at some point. Until the discovery of that change, he had a solid reputation, also he was a DT member with a lot of positive feedback received earned by different trades, or loans repaid, so quite realistic.
After it was discovered that the account was actually purchased, his participation in the forum was practically ended. (Unless he is not here again but under a different username)
I'm too lazy to read all that now in order to get to the all facts, but I see that all the negative tags are related exclusively to the purchase of the account, not at all because of his relationship with other members, involvement in fraud or possibly spamming the forum.

It seems that bill gator here after he bought that account, improved it more than the previous owner. At least that's how it feels to me. I would say that perhaps because of the rigid attitude at that time, we drove away one correct member and all under the auspices of the fight for the highest quality and fairest forum possible.

I know this is somewhat off-topic but I never knew you were going to have a new procedure and if there was a thread (or comments) about it, I missed it/them. The last I read about your health was in your extensive thread which was later locked.

I wish you success and good health  

You have a point but maybe when members are searching for scams, scammers or suspicious behaviour that these sorts of account farmings are discovered and made available to members.

Again you have a point but that is where difference of opinion comes in to play. As of yet there is no real single instruction from the forum admins or theymos about how to deal with such a scenario.

Many of those who spoke agreed that being tagged with a neutral tag would be fair as long as there were no other bad trails behind the owner of the purchased account. And also, I think that everyone was outraged by the lie invented by a recent character, diligently inventing a story with correspondence and a dead brother.
I will show two other examples where there were similar cases with a change of language. One account was marked with a neutral tag, the second with a negative one. The second had the same lie about knowing three languages, as well as numerous low-quality posts.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60634841
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61501027


To summarize, the more a person starts lying, the worse it gets for him. The recent case only confirms that proving something that is not true means drawing even more attention to yourself.
And your term "case by case" is correct.



Have a good procedure. Get well. It is most important!

I would beg to disagree. If you critically re-examine the whole post instead of one paragraph at a time --or if you may, that first part of the post as I talk about two interconnecting-but-separate topic-- the opinion on that paragraphs began with an assumption that the owner merely gifted an account --with or without the lies-- and then expanded into the second clause where there is a finding that his account is connected to several accounts.

It is not contradicting or augmenting each other, it was a situation of "if A then B, and if C then D"; if he simply gifted an account and made a good reputation from it, then he shouldn't be tagged, but if he abused forum rules by ban evasion then he should be tagged. How is this contradicting? The summary of the paragraphs even written on the last sentence of that part, "[...] then the negative tag should be placed, but that's the only reason of the negative tag; ban evasion, not buying or receiving accounts."

As for your second paragraph, I'll say that can be counted as "breach into a new topic based on previous one". My opinion on that situation is, "that's a risk someone has to willingly take when he consider buying accounts." If we may use the previous analogy I used, then the situation can be considered as a bad investment. The buyer bought from a wrong person, their misfortune.

But yes, I agree that if it's the case, then it should be tagged because if we get lenient on it, prolific ban evader will start using that excuses to get away from the situation, that they bought that connected account while factually the account never moves hand and he's just a prolific evader. So far, though, I have yet to meet an accusation of multi-account and ban evasion where the defendant said he's innocent because his account is bought.


In a simple words, there are high chances that ban evasion is related to a scam attempt. Ban evasion, in more than several occasions than we cared to admit, happen because someone tries to cheat the system. Either they violated forum rules, bounty abusing, or they tried to scam someone, and the likes of it; be it a temporary ban or permaban. An honest person would wait for the tempo ban to over or plead over the meta section [this is allowed]. But a cheater or a known scammer, whose got their account banned for that reason, fully know that there is no way to reinstate their account will choose to create a new account --thus, ban evasion-- to continue their agenda. Should this not be tagged?

I am seriously curious and interested about this. I gave a quick stroll at other threads and saw that you're not the only one standing to this opinion. I am somewhat agreed that it's mod's job to ban them, but shouldn't --or couldn't-- the DT leave a tag on that user before mods can take action and nuked the account to prevent the account from doing further harm to the forum?

I'm mobile getting ready for my procedure but while reading some replies I started wondering why people seek out some of these accounts?

We as a community have allowed reputation to be built from people who connect accounts. If there is no scam, what's the point? Why seek out an account especially 1 with no reputation? If you are messing around and find an account that's evading a ban, engaged in scamming, or some other act that we deem a crime in the community then by all means post and let the community know.

I feel like so much time is probably wasted by users finding accounts that potentially did nothing but were bought. Eyes should be more focused on bigger things IMO. Buying accounts to me is nothing.

This thread has been opened for a couple days now and we are no closer to a general consensus than we were when the thread was opened although I think more agree with tagging vs not tagging.

If there's no scam why bother though.

The forum does not need them but it is them that need the forum therefore they purchase and trade accounts in the hunt for bounty and signature campaigns.

What would happen if say for example the forum had an open policy of accepting with open arms those that buy and sell accounts. Surely the quality of posting would drop further from what it already has and not only that, it would most probably increase the number of posts (most of which would be nonsensical incoherent ramblings) being made in order to meet the minimum character criteria to earn the weekly fee.

He has no choice but to present lie after lie because he wanted to protect the account from neutral and/or negative feedback. To that degree he just kept fabricating stories and we do not know what the truth is or was about him.

Forgetting about the banned BlackViruse account for a moment, martyns never posted a reply about his alleged connections forum members merintishidup and dreamsnight. It would be interesting to read what he has to say.

If at that point of suspicion other members decide that the suspect has contributed enormously towards the forum then he might get away from being tagged at all however that does not send the best signal to others as they can try to use that same defence when trying to protect their traded accounts from being tagged.

After all, when a particular member (now a campaign manager) was accused of having purchased his account several years ago and a thread was opened to discuss him, he ended up being defended by several members. There is no consistency in the way DT and DT members approach this matter. If the forum policy is simple as purchased/traded account = negative tag then it is settled and there is nothing else to discuss but when it comes to being subjective and opinionated about whether exceptions should be made or whether mitigation should be considered on a case by case basis, we end up having disagreements.

Fair enough but that would again make it subjective. One member may feel a negative tag is warranted/justified but another member may feel a neutral or none is appropriate and then we all go back to same point debating the subject all over again.

Why ban evasion need to receive negative feedback? ban evasion has no business with scam.

Ban evasion and spam are moderators job, not DT job. DT members only help the moderators to expose account related with previous banned account and reporting spam posts. The punishment of ban evader account is banned, not negative feedback.

What I understand is someone have an account named Bob, Bob is never plagiarized any post. This person want to buy an account named Alice which is a ban evade, then you're saying Bob shouldn't get banned since Alice was previously controlled by other person?

I'd say Bob should get banned too because the person want to take a risk by buying an account, if he can't take all the risk, he shouldn't buy an account in the first place.

Yes Im aware but surely some company or firm must be thinking of this to have a more wide horizon since the username or account they bought is a popular or really an influence people here. Thats a fact and can help their product or service spread easier. But you are right trust isnt soemthing can be bought so there must be a ground rule for that. Like I suggested above a specific rule to follow by others when the issue is about buying an account.

If you critically re-examine the above statement, you will discover that some statements are augmenting the previous ones while some parts are contradictory.

If an account changed hands buy mutal understanding (account sales), neutral tag is OK for that.
But if the transferred account has issues with ban evasion, a negative tag is needed.
What if the person to whom the account was transferred to has never involved in ban evasion, but the account he/she bought has now brought evasion to them which may even affect their different innocent account. I believe someone understands what I meant.

Copper membership gives everything the one needs for opening a topic for a project with links and pics, and for leaving posts with any updates. It is a fully clear and not discouraged way of representing any company. And we see that many use it. No need of a fishy someone else's account buying.

Trust is a personal achievement. Bought account can't inherit trust of the original owner. Moreover, if someone pretends on someone else's reputation it shows that he can't be trusted. If something is not prohibited by law it doesn't make it highly moral by default.

Maybe if buying an account for company purpose to post their announcement or services maybe its fine to buy one with well trusted account as long as it indicates that they bought it and will use for the intended purpose hence signature campaigning isnt allowed since his not the person who rank up that account.

Since rules say that buying an account is allowed. Then there must be specifications on what grounds they will not be harmful which I believe will be hard to establish, cause theymos wont do rules for that for sure. Maybe moderators can draft one and if theymos approved will be set as new rule for that. Just a thought!

I don't think I've ever tagged someone for buying an account. I've seen a well-trusted account tagged years after buying it (which seemed more like a political attack than having anything to do with not being trusted), and I've seen a bought account that's now been on DT1/2 for a long time.
So as usual: "it depends"!

I tried to create some discussion about account sales 3 years ago: [click-bait] Should I start escrowing accounts?

My opinion: it's a waste of time.

(click to read the full post)

Agreed too

By buying an account, they risk losing money when the account gets tagged, or in case the seller scams them directly. Either way, they risk having even less money to feed their families.

Buying an account is like lying on your resume.

Given what happened in that topic it seems you and I and whoever was on the same boat are probably a minority when it comes to community consensus in regards to this issue, and I respect that, I wouldn't count on my opinions to be widely accepted, I am sure everyone else has got a point.

However, my thoughts still stand. I still think that the single incident of an account changing hands alone is not enough for negative feedback for most cases unless owning that internet persona poses direct risks to the community which was not the case for that account given that he had no merit, reputation or even a high rank, which is why I commented on the subject because at that point in time all the info we had was that x account changed hands, but later on when more members brought more points related to the account in question, it gave the negative feedback more merit.

honestly, though I don't think community consensus is established by having a vote of some kind or by people commenting on a topic saying what they believe or don't, it would only be changed by actions, it starts by distrusting the judgment of those who you disagree with, and then counter-feedbacks, eventually one "group" with common consensus will stay in "power".

However, the issue here is that account sellers/buyers are not worthy and don't deserve a "DT hard fork", I would not distrust great community members like JollyGood or lovesmayfamilis just because they tagged a random account after enough evidence was there to support their cause.

There is no universal answer for everyone.
I think that neutral feedback is enough in most cases when suspected purchased account is identified, but sometimes negative feedback can also be applied.
Neutral feedback should be given if user purchased account only to participate in signature campaigns with low quality posts, with no real contribution to forum, and for making up fantasy stories and lies.
Negative feedback should be given for high ranked members with prior reputation that changed hands, when someone is caught scamming other members, or doing other suspicious activity in forum.

I rarely comment on this issue, and I appreciate that yahoo makes the consideration for people for whom $50 a week is simply much more money than they could make working really hard. I come from such a country (well, not national wage but the specific place I come from anyway, I know until this day people earning less than $50 a month), so I know I can speak with some voice, even if I no longer am in that situation, and haven't been since the 1990s.

That all said, the sole purpose of getting an account to earn is not wrong, even commendable. I'd do it in that situation. Buying and trading accounts, on their own, I don't disagree with. But I would push for an additional setting that declares change of ownership. Maybe I would like my kid to own and continue this account in good faith, perhaps to continue some long-running thread, if he is willing. But if that happens, I'd like that to be known.

We must also consider that some campaign requirements include some degree of age, merit or trust.  To buy an account to meet requirements you otherwise wouldn't, is some form of deception.

A newbie has some obstacles, true:

a. Not everyone speaks good English so they must find campaigns that pay for local boards.
b. It can be difficult to earn merit at first, particularly when they have no new contribution, or lack the language for it.

Perhaps campaigns must also look beyond the (sometimes meaningless) trust, legendary status, etc. And also consider (new) members who are earnest about contributing to the campaign and forum. I am fully for a "case by case" policy.

That said, I try to report posts and it's pretty clear that the majority of posters looking to earn aren't even really interested in contributing to the forum. A person earnestly interested to earn, is also interested to earn more, and knows they can do this by improving their reputation, quality, and status.

But these accounts clearly are only interested in farming, likely because they are owned by the same groups of people -- I worked in content moderation back in 2016/17 and it is there, with basic blockchain analysis, that you see just how rotten these networks are. A few farmers spamming boards with hundreds of accounts in altcoin boards.

I've also reported names of accounts that pop up in Bitcoin and Gambling -- I understand some Indonesian/Malay, and you can immediately see the connections in the style of names, the things they say, the campaigns they sign up in, the topics they trawl. I don't have the desire to dig but I suspect many have traded hands.

If it deviates too much with the original account and how it was operating when active, that's definitely a sold account and if it has changed password. I'm all in tagging those accounts hat have planned or done scamming just to take advantage of the built account.

I've seen several cases of selling/buying accounts on this forum, at the end of the story the one who buys becomes a victim and the one who sells wins.
Reason: the account was hacked, after a few months accusations were made, for me buying and selling accounts is high risk, and anyone who finds out that the account was bought or sold must be painted red. no haggling in case of selling/buying accounts.

Indeed every member who buys an account, the cases that occur are different.
But most buying and selling has bad intentions, I once got a PM from a member of this forum, certain accounts have been bought and sold, coincidentally the account was related to fraud in the campaign, they asked me to remove the red paint, who sent me a PM saying the account has been bought, at a low price, but he was wrong, after he said his account was sold and he bought it, I doubled the red paint for his account, at that time his account had already reached the SR rating.

This is the account i mean: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=897308

So for me those who sell and buy can't be trusted, the red color is suitable and appropriate for selling & buying accounts.

To the best of my knowledge all the cases I have seen related to account buying will lead to the negative tag for the account and if possible the buyer and seller account as well because mostly it will be a hacked account.

Well, I am glad that you asked to community about buying a legitimate account which is created by someone and may sell it for financial need or something but at the end it will be transparent so we know that account changed hands without doing work on our side.

BTW am very curious to read all opinions given from our fellas.

I think that it is as the most here have written a case to case thing !

Account sellers should be tagged as you never know where they got the Account like on a normal way or the Account got hacked that they selling.
About the Accounts that got bought from somebody its also a case by case thing and depends on a few things.

• What History has that Account and how was it used
• Is it and was the Account used for business
• How was the behavior of the Account before and after it changed hands
• What rank has the Account
• Is the Account bought for Scam , Spam or other shady things.

If the Accounts behavior after they got sold is bad a negative tagg can be used.
Neutral tagg can be given when the Account is used for normal things and you dont have to worry that his prospects are bad.

Honestly, the ambivalence in that bolded part of the sentence in the quote should be explained further or edited by whoever that drafted it. It's now a grey area. That same issue came up in the recent past here but it wasn't fully resolved.

On the part of getting bought accounts tagged, only those with a certain trust score should be tagged with a neutral if sold just to alert members of the community that the account has changed hands. Then if it's discovered that the account is trying to scam, it should be plastered with red trust. Any zero account shouldn't be tagged when sold except they get involved in fraudulent activities.