Topic: Discussion on buying/selling accounts/users actively seeking possible bought acc (Read 1214 times)

The martyns web of connections seem to increase the more his account is looked in to. I wonder if it will be a more prolific farming ring than what figmentofmyass was operating.

You are right, as far as I can recall by far the majority of the sold/hacked accounts do get some sort of tag. I feel probably both negative and neutral tags in this case will not be heavily contested even by most of those that have previously felt some form of pity for martyns.

It can be considered as begging.


But if a merit source considers the other way I guess it is between him and theymos what is allowed for a merit source. As for other users, everyone have an own point of view which post is okay for giving a merit for it: some do it for very informative posts, some for the posts with a similar position, some for fun posts, some for emotional posts, — it's a free choice.

In order words, if the word 'trade' is not involved. I mean there is no monetary attachment, it is right to swing into the dm of a merit source and give them reasons to be dropping me merits more than I deserve. If this isn't seen as a merit begging by the merit source, it is all fine that way.


I can confirm today that theymos is a wise man. If there be rigid rules for everything, the moderators would likely be acting against their wish in most cases. Because they wouldn't use their reasoning or conscience, rather they will simply trace your offence to a laid down punishment and that settles it.

There's this:

And there's this:

That's why there is more or less consensus over it: if some buy or sell merits, it means they trade a measure of recognition on the forum and it makes them dubious counterparties. So trading with them has higher risks, so they deserve red marks in a trust system.

So right, it is not a matter of rules, but it is a matter of reputation system of the forum.

Gosh! LoyceV you scared me by this post. That except the merit sources, any other person can buy or sale merits. I haven't read something of this nature in this forum. Merit trading had always been known as a serious offence even more than account selling.



Oh! No No... this is true. This simply means there are no firm rules in BTT.

A few other DT members from Indonesia have discussed what deserves feedback and what doesn't, among which the main focus of feedback is for buying, selling, and lending issues ([INFO] DT1 dan DT2 yang berasal dari user Indonesia).

In essence, my fellow Indonesian DT members and I agree on the following admin statement:


In this forum, having multiple accounts and buying and selling Bitcointalk accounts is not prohibited as long as it is not used to violate forum rules. But I don't like the practice of buying and selling accounts, especially if the one who buys a high-rank account is a beginner (my thread regarding this: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/info-stop-memperjualbelikan-akun-bitcointalk-dan-poin-merit-3070438).

Suppose the account bought and sold turns out to be an offense, such as cheating the campaign by using several alt accounts at once or committing fraud against other users by abusing the trust of the account he bought. In that case, I think it deserves a red tag, but if the purchased accounts may not have been proven guilty, I do not want to abuse my authority as DT1 to give them a red tag.

Merit sources aren't allowed to sell Merit. Other than that, it's allowed to buy Merit, and that's probably because of the same reason why account sales are allowed: it can't be stopped anyway.

I can help you here: I created this account by myself. If it ever changes owner, I expect it to be tagged instantly! It shouldn't be too hard to notice when someone else is posting on my account.
Always stay vigilant.

Take a look at Active users and top posters on Bitcointalk.org in the past 7 days.

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.

Allow me to quote theymos on Merit sales:
The real problem is campaigns paying shitposters, see the above 7 days link: massive spam paid almost exclusively by the same signature campaign.

I decided to quote the whole of your post so that anyone can read and understand how unconnected your post is to what you were replying.
If you scroll up, you will discover that I cropped 1miau post to just one line and also replied with just a one line post.
You trying to prove that the statement that account sells is tantamount to merit buying is bogus, you even ended up commiting the blunder of poor knowledge of what is being discussed which could be termed off topic.
See the highlights of what you said and try prove them to me;

• This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank;
• and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information
• If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.

1. Explain why someone would buy a newbie account with zero merits when they can easily create an anonymous account?
2. The forum has provisions for use of VPN or Tor to hide your proxy address and what is needed here is your username and not real name. There's an option to hide email. So?
3. How will you find out that yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777 accounts have changed hands when sellers don't announce anywhere about their accounts changing hands.
Apart from these prominent accounts you mentioned, there are many legendary accounts you probably have not seen since you joined forum but they exist and use the forum almost on daily bases.

It's not a bogus argument at all.
Why should members here continue to write quality posts if you can buy Merits and get accepted into the best paying campaign and also stay in it for shitposting one-liners 24/7??
Buying / selling ranked accounts is undermining the Merit system and discouraging to write quality posts to achieve a higher rank if you can simply buy it.


Exactly this. 
Why would someone buy a Newbie Account? 
Why risking to get scammed or tagged for buying an account with 0 Merit?
Why even paying money for this, when everyone can create a new account for free?
Just why??? 

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I'm sorry (not sorry) but you are completely clueless.
Your bullshit doesn't make any sense. 

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You are clearly lacking any knowledge about DT and negative trust in general. Please go educate yourself before spreading misinformation here.
Buying and selling accounts have resulted in 99% of all detected and proven cases in the past getting tagged because account sales encourage scam and spam on the forum:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=232156

And no, it's not necessary to buy an account to participate in discussion and forum activities.
But buying an account is necessary to get accepted (and stay) in signature campaigns if you can't earn Merit for quality posts. 
That's how it is, deal with it!

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It's basically what DT has done with sold or hacked accounts in the past. Not a ban but a negative trust. So yes, people can buy / sell accounts but it will get tagged.
I believe once a sold or hacked account has been detected, there's a 99% chance, that the account will get tagged, if there is sufficient proof.
However, I'm always giving everyone the benefit of doubt.
For the case here of martyns, I've only submitted a neutral trust so far but I might change it into negative, considering his lies and involvement in other abuses. The negative trusts on his accounts are very valid.
And it's quite funny that sold or hacked accounts are often involved in various abuses, isn't it?
Maybe account buyers aren't so innocent as suggested here by a few members...

One type scam not really discussed in the forum is the number of sold accounts that end up receiving loans and then defaulting and allowing the account to receive negative trust. Is something like that even happening regularly?

I wonder what comments others will make about your strategy because it effectively means a blanket ban for buying/selling accounts and dismisses by default any notion of mitigation (and any sympathy along with it). Will account sales ever be accepted, I doubt it but there could be exceptional circumstances we have not contemplated yet.

When you want to see problems then you will always see problems. What makes you think that there is going to be a problem or something is becoming bigger problem. Are you a person from the future and landed into our timezone using your invented time machine?

Here what I see problem when I look at your profile.
What do I get from all these positive feedback?

I can see you have a greater goal to build the account and then you will scam someone. You have no trading history but someone may feel safe looking at all these positive feedback then try to have a large deal. You will take the chance and gone, no one finds you. A scam accusation is the best and these same group of people will then tag you.  Should I tag you before the problem become bigger?

I can see you are building your account and aligned with a group of people who have the same interest too and exchanging positive feedback to each others to build your accounts. Should I see a problem here and tag you? Problem can be bigger, right?

On the other hand I can see, it's okay, when someone is trying to build their account. It looks odd when an account received 6 positive feedback from a group of people [in just 4 years of timestamp, obviously after the merit system introduced] but none of them are trade related where feedback was supposed to be encouraging trades between users.

What difference you and the other account have which was accused for an alt [you think they could scam, they are problem and so many negative things]?

[Edit] Speaking about problem. Look what I found when I was doing the same like you guys do. Well I did not dig that well. I just wanted to see how you started since you are one of the account which started after the merit system.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/fatfork-2738899
[The last page of your post history, starting from the most last post which was your first post and then 2nd last is your 2nd post and so on].

Who on the universe joined the forum and after one day starts posting on the [1], [2], [3] scam accusation section and making good arguments?
How did he find the forum related discussions on Meta? Ah he knows project development board too.
The most merit cycled boards are probably Meta, reputation and scam accusation boards. It took him time to discover reputation board but he was good enough to find other boards and having sensible discussions in less than a week time-span.

How strange it's for a newbie account who found everything very easily where it's even harder for a member or full member accounts to find these space to gain their merits.

Shall I start it with a problem and better to start for staying safe by giving a tag that FatFork is an alt account with the reference of this post?
Considering your logic of becoming the problem bigger I should have one for you? 😉

Comparing this forum with other social networks that prioritize financial gain for their owners is just not right. BitcoinTalk values personal information privacy and doesn't require any sensitive details during sign-up. You can even register with a throwaway email address (not a great idea, though) and use Tor or VPN to hide your real IP address. So, buying newbie accounts doesn't make sense at all, and I really don't think that many people do it.


Where did you get that from? I suggest you read the current forum's practices regarding privacy-relevant information before making any assumptions.


Account sales are not strictly prohibited by the forum, but they are generally frowned upon by its members.


No. Tagging someone with zero scam history is not necessarily an abuse of the trust system. The system is designed to help identify and address potential issues before they become bigger problems. Even if someone has no history of scams, they may still engage in behavior that violates forum rules or causes other users to feel he/she is untrustworthy.

It seems like you might not fully understand the difference between the trust system and flags. You should check out this post by theymos for a better understanding.

Good job yahoo62278 for creating the topic. It was a needed topic and I think many of us should be talking about it.

1st of all, when you are targeted in the forum by an individual or a bunch of individuals then you have very slim chance to get away from it. I saw it to happen with many members and a lot of them left the forum (safe to say, left the account). Many of them had positive contributions and ultimately the forum as a whole lost it.


2nd of all, there are group of people who made their day job finding scammers, spammers, alt accounts and the benefit for them is to build a reputation for their own. The effect was widely noticed after the merit system was introduced. A lot of users realized it's not going to happen to rank up without making any contribution. So they started to digging up others merit transactions, wallet address connections etc. When one of the connection is made then find something to connect it with a ban evading account or find if they applied in same signature campaign etc.

The basic of growing this hunting culture actually developed to gain personal goals.

Buying an account is discouraged.

But someone who bought an account from years ago [whatever their reason is except any attempt to scam] why is it important to dig up the account today and try everything to ruin it after years when the account looks clearly focusing on signature campaign earning? 

Why it's important to find a plagiarized post that happened 5 years ago and bring it today then give everything to ban the account?

Why it's important to find wallet connection that happened 7 years ago in a signature campaign and tag the account?

The most dangerous part is, who are these people to constantly policing over everyone? Ban the signature feature, 95 or even more out of 100 of them will make one or two posts in a month or week. No offense for any specific signature campaign member from Chipmixer, those who used to make over 50 posts per week when Chipmixer was paying for up to 50 posts, how many of them now makes 50 posts? [Someone can scrap their posts history and make an average to show before and after].

Whatever happen in the forum is for earning from signature campaign, losing competitions, taking revenge just because you don't like the particular person. Most importantly having personal benefits. I can name you a few accounts who started spamming right after they became legendary but before becoming legendary they were regularly looking for wrongdoings from accounts [Making so called quality contribution] and accusing others left and right.

I will have more to say from many different dimensions. But let's see what others take from this so far.   

First of all why would someone buy a newbie acount when it takes less than 30 minutes to create an account here? I'm sure antone would be willing to do that sounds stupid if you ask me. Most times accounts are bought because of what the buyers stands to gain from it so in the case of a newbie account I don't see what the buyer will benefit from it.


Not just the first IP address, It also saves IP for the last 30 days so how then do the buyer who wants to avoid using their IP (as you claimed) plan to avoid that? https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php


Probably because you're no longer dealing with the original owner which technically means you're no longer dealing with those users you mentioned but with a total stranger who has done nothing or contributed nothing to the forum. And because those account you mentioned are highly respected members of the forum red tagged will be appropriate to warn others the risk of trading with it.

Op, sorry if I intruded your thread.

I don't think a poll would have helped anything. The results of any poll could be manipulated via a few pms and groups having their friends vote for the result they wish to see win.

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank; this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information. Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address? Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities is clearly an abuse of the system.

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.


Op you should have added a poll

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

What happens if a ban evader has several high ranking alt-accounts and uses them to support the ban evaders application for having the ban overturned? Even if it not related to a scam, surely in that scenario action should taken across all accounts if they are discovered.

We should separating between ban evader and scammer or abuser.

Not all ban evader are scammer or abuser because he was banned because of committing plagiarism, so he only deserve to get a neutral feedback, it's different if the ban evader was an abuser or scammer.

Now what if the ban evader which never scam or abuse created a new alt account in order to milking the forum by joining a signature campaign? this one is tricky. Some people will say let alone his business because he's not high risk of losing money. Some people will say he's a dishonest person and deserve to get negative feedback.

I want to clarify if I'm not supporting ban evader, but I don't know why you can think the account will cause a further harm to the forum. It's more like your own assumption rather than being objective about what he had done in this forum.

I would add that since signature campaigns are a big attraction of this forum, someone who is genuinely interested in the forum can be monetizing an account in a year or less. No buying accounts, no sending merits to each other between alts, etc. The fact that you are at least 9 months writing without getting paid shows that you are not interested in this forum just for the money, but that you take it as a complement for doing something you like.

As I can remember correctly, account sales are frequently resulting in negative trust for both, seller and buyer = bought account is tagged and seller's account (if detected) is tagged as well.
But account sellers generally don't care if their account gets tagged because it is easy for them to create a new one. The sold account is important to be intact to get it into a signature campaign or perform other shady activity like scams.

Bought accounts are tagged for a reason: it will make account sales less attractive, both for seller and buyer if they know, that DT will come after them and give them a negative trust, if detected.
And a negative trust will make sold accounts useless.
By doing so, account sellers are having a hard time selling accounts = account sellers are effectively driven out of "business".

A high ranked account is only bought for the following reasons:
- perform a scam
- enroll it in a signature campaign
For normal discussions, new members don't need a high-ranked account. To get Jr. Member rank and enable pictures is pretty easy. It's also possible to buy Copper Member status from theymos.
Selling high-ranked account is just not necessary at all to participate in forum discussions.
It just causes trouble, massive sigspam, hacking into accounts and scam, that's why DT doesn't like it, rightfully so.

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.
Why it's so difficult for new members to earn Merit for good posts if they want to join a signature campaign? Receiving some Sats as a reward for weekly posts is not a human right, it's a privilege. People need to prove to be worthy to be eligible for it, by providing quality posts. It's vital for the forum.
Everyone has done so to earn Merit for good posts.

I'm all for giving out more Merit to lower ranks (Sr. Member or lower) to help ranking them up if they show some effort.
We should all visit such profiles frequently, for example in Beginners and Help.
But I'm not in favor of account sales because it's just wrong in my opinion.

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There have been many discussions around this and there haven't been good solutions in favor of "legalizing" account sales so far.
If there's a good solution, then it might be possible to enable it. But I haven't seen any good suggestion, where account sales doesn't lead to massive sigspam, account sellers doing shady things, scams and even hacking existing accounts.
I'm not in favor of accounts changing hands. This position has been very uncontroversial when members like marlboroza or Lauda still have been around but yes, since marlboroza or Lauda are not around anymore, the anti-account seller sentiment has decreased.
Maybe all members wanting to "legalize" account sales can work out a working strategy?

But as long as we don't have a working strategy to "legalize" account sales, it's best in my opinion to give out negative trust if there's enough evidence about sold / hacked accounts.

Thanks, everything went fine.


Getting back on topic, I will leave this open until Monday to give anyone that wants to a chance to reply. Maybe there will be another point of view that none of us are considering, maybe there won't. I appreciate everyone who has given an opinion thus far.

A group of people felt such happiness after ruinning Bill gator's account.

The mistake bill gator had done was that he admitted with honesty.

In this forum when you are being honest and admit a mistake, in some cases you get more punishment where you were supposed to be forgiven.

BitMaxz, had similar case but he was cleaver enough and did not even bother to respond the accusation against him.

BitMaxz did the right thing by the way.

Cool, at first attempt, I approached your submissions part by part, but now I have to approach it holistically.
I agree that inherited ban evasion should stand, else chronic evaders will use bought account as excuse for evasion. Such inherited bans should be regarded as bad investments.

Without connecting deep, it appears that DT strengths has nothing/little to do with reporting ban evasion. The best to do is to report to moderators and if the moderators have approached the case and dismiss same as a bad report. The ban evader should be acquitted without a tag.
If I happen to be a campaign manager, I will not fail to hire a particular user because of a note of ban evasion. I would just conclude that the DT member is being over desirous to unseat that particular account.

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.

This is perhaps the best answer to the discussion on this topic. Each change of account owner is a case in itself and it is impossible to make a universal rule for everyone. Unless a rule is made that it is strictly against official forum rules.
Actually, here the whole thing goes back to the beginning, correct and incorrect feedback. Especially from DT1 members.


I have seen a lot of situations where a negative tag has remained, although it is inappropriate, the user who left it is less or not active at all. Therefore, it is not desirable to give a tag in advance under the assumption that it is easy to change it.


For a legendary account, you need 770-1030+ activity minimum, which means 2+ years. It is a long period and someone wants legendary benefits much faster. It's all about "why".
Otherwise, this does not only happen on Bitcointalk, almost every reputable forum where higher-ranked accounts have certain benefits they have the same situation and account trades.

Why is buying of account necessary?

If you have a company and you want to advertise your products, you can buy a copper membership.

If you want to join a signature campaign, you need to build an account from brand new.

Accounts sales and buying of account should not only be discouraged on this forum, it should be banned. This can make someone to be account farmer with low quality posts.

For account sellers and buyers, with valid evidence, red tag should follow until the buyer prove to be worthy of the red tag removal.

If I may argue, the snippet of my post you quoted were talking about a specific person who --in that scenario-- only use the account for signature bounty purpose and not for doing any trade, with assumption that didn't make posts that is not up to forum's standard; plagiarism, low quality post, out of topic. [We're taking the paragraph that followed it, about the possibility to leave negative trust for the reason of ban evasion and relation to multi-acc, out of the discussion]. He's not about to do any trade, selling goods or collectibles, or perhaps even borrowing some fund. He's strictly walking on the realm of bounty campaign.

This alone, IMO, should not warrant a negative feedback because the new feedback system are more reserved to trading purpose, as evidenced by the sentence on your screenshot, "Negative - You think that trading with this person is high-risk. You might also be able to add a flag.", as well as your explanation below it.

You are not trading with him, not risking any of your money on him. He's living a quiet life making posts and engaging on forum's discussion. His case is a different case from a multi-acc abuser, loan defaulter, poster of questionable project [included in it: rug pull, plagiarized documents, fake team, and the likes]. Thus the statement that warrant negative feedback is not entirely met and the warn itself is rather pointless --aside from adding more misery to the account owner-- as other people are not and will not trade with them.

If I may borrow Loyce's guide for new trust and feedback setting,


As inferred by the upper portion of the snippet, positive, neutral, and negative feedback are reserved for when you dealing with someone and risking some funds.

While we can argue with the lower portion of the snippet that we can tag them with negative because we're expressing our opinion that we deemed the said person not trustworthy because he was giften an account, the do's and don'ts might give a better insight what should be done,


Since we're assuming he's using the account for the purpose of earning from signature campaign, and he made a decent post, not scamming anyone, not using AI, not plagiarizing someone else's post or abusing campaign with multi-acc [remember, we took aside the possibility of the connection with blackviruse for this discussion], there were no forum rules being violated. But let's suppose account moving hand is now considered as a violation, it's still advised to not leave a negative feedback based on it.

Thus... the best approach if someone deemed it as necessary, will be to put the user on distrust list [~] to make sure the said person did not reached DT because we may argue that he has a very poor judgement by choosing to take a shortcut by buying an account/inheriting it instead of building his own reputation.

As an end note, I am not insisiting my opinion, just giving voice to what's on my mind and completely open for a discussion or a proposed other perspective for this matter.

I think if someone want to take a break for long time and want to make sure his account will not be used by other person or hacker. You can change your email address with really hard and long username that you will not remember, enable secret password and then recover your account via secret password.

It will make your account will be locked and the only way to recover it through signing message.

I disagree, do you think someone who bought an account is always a shitposter? you can argue if he's not a shitposter, he can create his own account and rank up.

But buying an account is a way to skip him to wait until his account ranked up, Hero Member rank account need a year and 4 months.

When I talk about reputation it is not just about marks in a forum trust system. It is about what ideas does a person stand for, how reasonable are his advice, etc. Many have no marks but we know them as persons. And then someone hacks their account and posts something silly, with low sense, standing for opposite ideas... even if there are no red marks it harms reputation anyway. You look at a person and don't know what to think. In several months even if account is returned to its owner the owner will have to do a huge work to restore what was ruined and probably some echoes of such hack will be heard for years. We shouldn't motivate hackers by making easy to use a hacked acc.

Sold accounts should be completely painted in red trust if they are bought with green trust on them, that's for sure. And if the owner manages to recover the account, they can be removed. Or at least converted to neutral feedback.


That's why the merit requirement is so important. Campaign managers can easily increase the requirement to be at least 20 earned merit in the last 120 days, and a lot of weeds (bought accounts) would be rooted out.

First and most obvious is that it is not good to pretend to have someone else's reputation, non depending if that someone else is very respected one or not. By appropriating someone else's achievements users with bought accounts show that they should not be trusted.

But it is not the main thing why I don't like secret account selling. If account selling is not prevented then we motivate hackers to hack accounts. Maybe someone is tired of forum and wants a break for a couple of months or years and then returns and what will he see? His account is hacked, his reputation is ruined by someone else. And if sold accounts will be forgiven by default we'll face with increasing the problem of account hacking. I don't want anyone use my account even if I'm tired of forum for a while... or if someone dies and someone dubious will use his acc.

If someone wants to sell his own account openly... well, it's not what looks right-minded but at least everyone will see everything in this deal. So it is not good but at least not so shady.

Since the reason why most people are targeting account sales in the first place is to fight spam, rather than the sale of the accounts themselves, it makes more sense to focus on more ways of filtering out forum spam that go beyond using the Ignore button.

Because let's face it. When someone buys an account with the intention to enroll a bunch of other accounts into a signature campaign, and some are accepted, one of two things will happen (assuming they don't get busted first):

1: Users spams, and they get kicked out or red-dusted.
2: The users all make constructive posts.

Of (2), there are two possible branches:

2A: The campaign forbids alt accounts for entering under any circumstances, in that case, all accounts involved get summarily executed as what happened with figmentofmyass and his alts.
2B: The campaign has no such rule, no action is taken against such accounts, and life goes on, such as hilariousandco/etc.

The overwhelming majority of account sales fall under (1). Most that don't fall into (2A) because almost all campaigns forbid alt accounts.

This serves to indicate that it is necessary to take measures to limit spam especially the kind that will not go away even if signature campaigns are banned, and if there is no stricter enforcement of the no-spam rule by moderators, then we need to make tools for (at least) registered users to be able to hide spam from their browsing experience.

I am a supporter of this. Negative tags should serve to warn of danger and then can be changed in light of the facts.

First of all, thank you yahoo62278 for bringing this thread to my attention. I need to look more into the subject matter, have only skimmed the facts now.

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I don't think so. Tags are all about trust:



Tags are supposed to warn other users that a person is not very trustworthy and you should be very careful when trading coins with this person. The trading of coins has of course now shifted away from the forum and currently concerns rather collectibles and co., but the intention is the same: Would I enter into a trade with this person in good conscience or not.

So if someone has bought an account I would at least at the beginning under no circumstances enter into a trade and I think only a few of us would. So for me, in this situation, a negative tag would be quite justified. The tags can later be relatively easily converted into, for example, neutral tags when it has become clear how the new account owner behaves and whether he is basically trustworthy or not.

Everyone is 100% entitled to their opinion. Never going to dispute that.

This is not exactly about the account in that thread. That user dug his own grave everytime he responded. I just used that thread as the reference point since some of what I am asking is being discussed there.

Suspect a bought account?
Check the feedback history, do you see anything earned by the previous owner? Leave a neutral tag as it's a bought account, obviously give a chance to admit or defend the guy. If the account seem to be doing business before making a name for it then do something if the business looks shady but if the account is clearly trying to earn something from campings and not harming anyone, just let it go.

How would you know the account is hacked?
Well untill the main owner does not come and claim with evidence, you will never know.

I don't think distrusting is needed too unless it's found that the account is abusing the trust system.

Before the merit system introduced creating accounts and farming them was easy. People did not have value for their accounts as it was not earned the rank by hard working but now things are different. I don't think anyone who worked a lot to build up an account to hero or legendary will think about selling their accounts. It's more profitable for them to earn the money by doing signature campaigns.

Not all accounts used to buy / sell for scamming. But unfortunately it was becoming a common thing that buying account means the new owners will scam others.

We have many evidence where the original accounts scammed a lot of money when they thought they had enough with it.

May be lenders should be more careful when they are lending.

AFAIK past and present already different.

I check on many accounts which receive negative feedback from DT members were mostly about spam, merit exchange etc. That's not correct to leave negative feedback with such reason. If someone spam, just report it to moderator. If someone exchange merit with his alt, just leave him a neutral feedback.

I think due to high paying bounties and long term Bitcoin signature campaign, make people tend to spam and the rules are getting more stricter to prevent from someone milking the forum.


Now back to your question about buying and selling accounts, I think we need to agree if each person has his own judgement, right?

I will say if someone really think it's right to leaving negative feedback due to changed hands even the account has no reputation, do it. If someone not really sure if that's case is deserved to get negative feedback or in grey area, just leave a neutral feedback.

Then if you think that's account shouldn't deserved to get negative feedback, you can distrust them.

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I just want to add the thread you mentioned before is fall to cheating in a campaign which deserve to get negative feedback

"Case by case" basis does not mean that the law is not the same for everyone. When you analyze two murders, if one is in self-defense and the second is to steal money from the victim with premeditation and malice, obviously they will have two different sentences, the law being the same for all.

That said, there are things about the "case by case" of this forum that I do not understand, such as Naim027 not being permabanned again.

The law in not equal for EVERYONE now. How many times do you see the term "case by case" basis?


Back when accounts were being used for collateral who do you guys think were the main sellers? Old lenders of course. How many of those old lenders would people tag now for sales? Since we are discussing equal laws.

I'm not looking to argue with anyone, I'm looking for discussion period.

yahoo62278, Can I create a newbie account and be honest that I am from a poor country, that I will not be a burden on the forum, and that my goal is only to earn food for the family? Will you accept me into your company? Why should I spend extra, expensive money for myself if, in your opinion, it is easier for me to admit to poverty, put pressure on pity, and calmly earn money here?

Wouldn't the one who bought an account with a rank be a beginner? Or will you sleep peacefully, realizing that you are being deceived but having too much faith in people?

So, I'm a newbie, and using Yahoo 62278 privileges, I'm going to my locale for communication. I write there: "Brothers, how are you?" And then, my brothers, who do not buy but honestly write and hope that someday they will also have a high rank and be able to feed their families, don't they think it's not fair? Why can I and they can't? Who puts the standard of living on the scale?

Can I make an amendment to the rules and provide a certificate of financial status when coming to the forum? For some reason, it seems to me that in this case, I, as a beginner, will be able to remain the poorest of all.
You are looking for justice, Yahoo62278, tell me, will the law be equal for everyone, or is the law more equal for someone?

All purchased accounts come to the forum to earn money, don't they? And since our forum is "not about work", we often repeat all this.

I suggested yesterday that we create a list of participants from the local Nigerian section, where people raise their own accounts. I have always said and will continue to say that I love these people and respect their patience and diligence. And it is in this section that I see people who work day by day themselves. What happened in this case to the Martyns? And what happened is that he is a lying, lazy guy, ready to go over our heads. Did he break the rules? Yes, and it's proven that, besides everything else, if he buys one account, he will buy two more.

There are cases of accounts being bought when we see a long-standing change of hands. At that time, it was not condemned, and in all the time that has passed, the new owner has been able to show himself by rising to the next level. Here we can talk about a neutral tag, and maybe even about its absence.

But the recent change of ownership and a blatant lie—look how Martyns writes about his brother— The fact that he died was not announced immediately. He corrected this, realizing that we would ask the brother. And also ignoring and subsequently lying about another blocked account—doesn't that deserve a negative tag? Does anyone here like to look like an idiot for believing this?

In addition, if someone buys someone else's account, he must understand that one day a ray of suspicion will be directed at him. If someone was Indonesian from the very beginning, why go to another locale?

As a result, I think that each case and each bought and caught account deserves separate consideration. When a person thinks people are idiots, the red tag fits well with his reputation.

I told you in the other thread. Who commits a crime does not change the typology of the crime. Giving different penalties depending on who commits the misconduct goes against the fundamental principles of law.

All this is stirred up by someone who not only bought an account, but is a ban evader and willingly participated in advertising a known scam site.

Being from a poor country and getting away with buying an account is a comparative aggravation against your compatriots from poor countries who do not take the fast track and with their effort little by little rank up the account.

If I may talk about the referrenced thread first, as I happen to be attending that thread, I think my stance for that case remains the same: I dive myself there just in the interest to reveal the truth behind it, the whole story. So far, unfortunately, the OP seems to get caught in a tangled web of his lies stories. Suppose I can get to the bottom of the case and --again, suppose-- he was lying about the gift thing, his post history still were/are not detrimental to the forum^[1], he did not scammed anyone yet --or ever-- so I don't think I'll leave a negative tag or even a neutral one.

I just don't see the point of it.

Negative tag will be unjustified as the person did no harm, didn't fool anyone, didn't abuse any rule. While neutral tag will practically serve no purpose at all as the account is a pure bounty hunter. That thin-black numbers on his trust column will just serve to inform BMs that the account move hands, and most likely the campaign managers --if they're a wise manager enough-- couldn't bother less as long as if that person made a good posts and promote the campaign they're working on. So yeah, no purpose.

One thing that needs to be voiced though, is a possibility that the account is connected to several accounts, which leads to ban evasion. I've asked the individual in question about this matter and he's yet to reply me, but suppose that the final verdict is that he's indeed connected to those accounts and thus evading forum's ban, then the negative tag should be placed, but that's the only reason of the negative tag; ban evasion, not buying or receiving accounts.

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Now, to address the issue globally, I personally think leaving a negative or neutral tag should be done on a case-by-case basis. No case has similar points and narratives and shouldn't be treated equally.

It leads us back to what happen after the account is bought.

Does the new owner use the account wisely? Post nicely? If yes, then why should they discouraged by negative tag and got all of their effort ruined? It's way past bedtime in my timezone so I am too lazy to dig the forum, but I recalled several cases raised about account changing hand on this forum. One of it that crossed my mind was a daughter of someone who passed away or something? I didn't follow the thread from the beginning, just got a summary of it, but IIRC she posted nicely, used the account wisely, got tagged and was forced to leave the forum for that reason. And what the forum got from it? We didn't get damaged by her existence and her posts here, but we might lose some potential by "banishing" her. Who knows if one day she developed into an excellent scam buster? Or build patches that helps the forum? Or spread awareness of this crypto to her friends and colleagues? So, as long as the new owner --whoever that is, my previous sentences were not limited to that specific female human-- use the account wisely, I don't think a negative tag is necessary.

Sure, they should have take the better way by building their account from the very basic level and climb up, that if their posts are good they'll reach high rank in no time so there's no reason to buy accounts, etc. but, it's already done, isn't it? The account is already bought, "damage" is already done, and the person --on this scenario-- put a good efforts and results on that bought account. I think the good outweight the bad thing. Maybe we can simplify it by turning it into a business POV. They invest in something, make a good effort on that investment and did no harm, so why should they be disturbed?

But umm... remember when I said earlier about case-by-case basis? Yeah, this is where my opinion get a little bit complicated.

If the bought account is a gleaming account though, high ranked member --I think it's suffice to say Sr. and above or maybe even FM-- who reached the position through earned merit instead of legacy, or account with positive feedback, then I think that bought account needs a neutral tag for the sole purpose of informing the members that at one point the account moved hand and the previous reputation --merit and feedback-- was not earned by the current owner. The tag serves as a divider of quality and reputation between the old and the new one created by the new owner.

Moving to the other side of the table, if the account was bought for the case of spamming, low quality post --which, sadly, as mentioned above by Ratimov, is the most likely to happen cases here-- though, then it deserves a tag. But even then, that tag was placed due to the post quality itself, one that's been placed to plenty of accounts that never moves hand for the very same reason.

Now, for the case that the account is sold, this is a completely different scenario than above.

The account seller, IMO, deserve at least a neutral tag to mark him for future reference. For the why he deserved a tag while the previous case should be treated after reviewing their posting habit is simply because I am sure that seller did not, does not, and will not care about how will the account be used after it moves hand. He couldn't care less if the new owner is a spammer, or a scammer, or both. Thus, clearly detrimental, and thus, a tag.

Of course this thread is strictly limited to account moving hand by being sold and bought? Not stolen and hacked? Because that two deserves a special room in hell, they go straight to jail.

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^[1]At least that's what perceived by several honorable members of the forum who attended that thread too, and I choose to just trust them as I haven't give his most recent posts a read to be able to put any weight on any side of the scale.

I think part of the answer to your stance here is geography. I sympathize with some cultures in the world because let's be honest, they can make more money here on the forum than they could with a real job in their area. So, they buy accounts so they can make money to feed their families.

Most people are on this forum to make money. Whether it be btc to save for later(HODLERS), money to feed their family, money to invest to make more money, or many other reasons. Even the forum itsself made money via selling ad space in the auctions, donations, or whatever.

Now, let's get back to the people who buy accounts for sig campaigns so they can earn money to eat. Do I love the quality of the user that usually is in this situation? No, they could really learn from reading the rules and stickies and try to contribute vs spamming the forum just to be paid. They should take the time to try and be a positive aspect of the forum vs something that everyone hates.

Should we only care about the financially well off? Should we be assholes to the less fortunate? That seems to be what I notice and probably have engaged in myself at 1 time or another. Everyone that visits the forum isn't the smartest, but they could possibly be taught a better way to use the forum if we knew they were willing to learn.

I think all accounts found to be bought should be ~ so they can never make DT. A small thing, but they should know that they can never be on DT.


This isn't the hill I want to make a stand on. I just generally think the issue is worth discussing.

In order to address this topic smoothly, we must have to explain in real words the controversial unofficial bitcointalk rule 18.
Let us solve the puzzle of "but account sales are discouraged" even when "allowed".

What ways can it be discouraged?

• Neg tag?
• Not being allowed to participate in campaigns by the CMs
• Neutral tag - almost ineffective

I'll suggest that before an account that changed ownership could be tagged. There should be;
1st - Efforts to uncover if it was hacked or mutually changed hands by sells.
2nd - If the new owner is adding value to the forum or spamming along.
3rd - If the new owner has the tendency to scam; here the DT status and knowing if the account is offering services or has offered services in the past may come in.
Finally, maybe it should be handle case by case just as there might not be a unified rule to tackle every cases.

I wanted to share my opinion, and of course I hope this thread will actually change my mindset about accounts sales.

As I learned to detect fraudulent accounts, I had to deliberately open through spreadsheets from campaign to campaign. I sometimes find them connected between accounts, getting different local board activity, language changes, and such. I managed to uncover several cases and solve them well. I'm also marking a few because they are trying to cheat the campaign as it is clearly intolerable.

About selling accounts, I think it's clear that some DT members really don't like it. But I'm starting to change the mindset that when an account is legally sold or changes hands ^{[not hacked/stolen]} then it's only eligible for neutral tag. I don't trust them [~] instead tag them with red tag ^{[right now].} But when this account is planning bad intentions, such as wanting to cheat through the reputation of old users, then it's clear that it will immediately turn into a red tag. But in practice, sold accounts allow spam to increase in forum so if a neutral tag is viable for them, then there should be plenty of people willing to report spam to the moderators as well. Of course this is all about me, although there are many people who disagree with this decision.

A couple days ago a THREAD was opened on a user regarding a possibly bought/hacked account. The user who opened the thread is fairly vigilant in scam busting and does a good job at it. I think lovesmayfamilis is fairly respected among the community, so I do not want them feeling like they are being attacked here. I think they do a great job, i just feel like some situations aren't worth looking in to.

I would like to see an open discussion regarding account sales. Obviously I know they aren't illegal but the forum users frown upon the activity. I would also like opinions regarding what is worthy of seeking as far as accounts that may be bought goes? Should users go out of their way looking for a connection on accounts that have 0 reputation? Should all accounts be tagged that are guilty of or presumed bought? Is a neutral tag appropriate for accounts that are bought that have no reputation, or should accounts be ruined period?

I know there are a lot against the buying and selling of accounts. I'm one that's sort of on the fence as all situations are not the same. If a reputable account is found to be sold that there is a high possibility it was bought to be used to scam, then of course I feel like more than a warning neutral should happen. As a community we should be always looking to protect the users of the forum, but what if the account is a nobody with no trust, no interest in the DT system, obviously bought to use in a sig campaign? IMO these accounts are not really harming anyone, and a neutral tag should suffice if found to be bought. Hacked accounts/stolen accounts should be tagged with a red IMO.


I've tagged all the current DT1 members so that we as a community can try to have a discussion regarding these issues. Some will respond, some won't but we should get a better idea of the community consensus this way.