Topic: Solution to account seller? I think (Read 522 times)

Agree with this mate  there some people who selling thier account with a high value and for sure they will not going to expose or used thier main account to do that And it's probably they will use an alt account. but once it caught that account is from selling then DT members will give a negative tag on that account so if other user want to buy an account and the purpose is to work or to earn money then thats a bad decision cause once it's caught like what I said above it will  have a negative feedback and  we all know that some high payer campaign didn't accept account have negative feedback.

There's no solution fot stopping them from selling sn account and I don't think that account buyers wi reveal their original account or main account to anyone. In order to waste their time, effort and money then giving negative trust score to that account is what you should do if it is proven that the account is bought from someone. The account can still be use to log in here in the forum but if the account is used to participate in signature campaigns then it will have a hard time getting accepted except 1xbit if it's still running.

Why? You open your topic with the word solution the title alone will attract attention considering that the subject is quite an issue here in Bitcointalk and you open in one of the most popular sections of Bitcointalk.
 
You mean you don't have this, so you don't care or just want to ignore every discussion that you participated in when every there is a question for you that you need to address?

https://t.me/BTTSuperNotifier_bot

            

Their is some certain things to be said out concerning selling of account..from initial statement I have not condemned selling of account and I'm not against it, but the issue is that a sold account can be use for illegality due to the reputation of the rightful owner of the account has create with people, so the buyer can't use this account as same as the owner both writing and otherwise.

It's very obvious that someone that bought accounts of senior member neither of a hero member is not going to learn with such hierarchy account, and it assumed that before you get such accounts I mentioned that means your contribution in the forum will be very strong and perfect.

the mindset of whom that bought account in the forum is not only to learn but to understand the basics concept of the forum, but the main objectives of someone who bought accounts is to earn a weekly subscription from the forum so it's not that is coming to learn and know the rules and regulations of forum

Yes maybe you can but I don't have much time to create alts and operate other accounts.

Of course you post will get attention because you are thinking of a solution to the forum's problem. However, I'm sure many senior members have thought about this before us and maybe what DT is doing is quite effective because I also didn't find another way because basically buying and selling accounts is not prohibited by the forum.

Just a little bunches of attention here and there from different perspectives and you are already running away and abandoning (forgetting) your topic that you supposedly created for a good course. Lol.

If you can't withstand this attention how then do you intend to withstand any attack that might be fired at you by the so-called account buyers in your bid to make bad  business for them? Perhaps you never thought of that.

There are things in life we can't stop from continually happening no matter how we try, and buying/selling of accounts is one of them, we can only prevent it from surging and I think the forum DT's are doing their best in that area. They are not magicians so they can't clamp down on all but the few one they have been able to decipher demonstrates that they are not sleeping on bike.

If you actually use your common sense, you can probably do it anonymously and create another account to post your investigations and it's not like you're using it to gain fame or infamy in the forum, you want to do it so account buyers and sellers are discouraged from doing so. KYC is not going to be a thing here, if it were then the doxing tags would be useless and invalidated.

I didn't expect this to get this much attention, I will try to reply when I can. Even forgot that I started this topic lmao.

Wow, it looks like you have a large collection of accounts. Can I bid on a merit source account, a mod account, and maybe theymos account? Come on, we can talk. LOL 

Either the seller is a scammer, or the buyer wants to scam. If anything, I'm surprised account sellers aren't more creative! For years, I've expected it but never seen it, so I might as well give them the idea now:

-sell accounts (this is happening already)
-sell DT1-inclusions
-sell DT1-exclusions
-sell inclusions with 250+ earned Merits
-sell inclusions with 10+ earned Merits
-sell a Merit source
-sell good posts that will earn Merit on it's own
-sell good posts including a certain number of Merit received within a certain number of days
-sell positive feedback (after a fixed trade)
-sell negative feedback (for whatever reason)
-sell Mod-accounts
-sell Admin-accounts (there must be someone out there dumb enough to fall for it)

All of the above of course comes with the (high) risk of getting scammed And even if you didn't get scammed, if you can't create good posts on your own, chances are you're going to be found out as an account buyer. Or you may just buy plagiarized content.
So just create your own account and learn things on your own, that's much more valuable in the long run.

By green trust did you meant positive feedback? If yes, Getting green trust isn't that hard. You just have to get yourself involved in a fake financial deal. Not that you need money, but you'll take a loan anyway for that tag. You can use a escrow service from a forum user or take loan from a reputed user and pay it in time. He will eventually tag you with a positive feedback saying "This person took money from me and retuned in time. Everything went smooth". Voilaa you got a green tag.

If you meant trust by DT. It isn't that easy.

Actually, not only that, in my local area there is an offer to create a new custom account with no limitation of ip-evil guarantee from the seller. And I've also seen some in the past offering green trust score accounts for sale. You can certainly guess what it's for.

So not only the seller and buyer gets negative tag but also innocent blckhawk gets tagged. Nice way to drown with everyone.

OP, what you proposed will cause unnecessary suspicious. I know you had good intention. But by doing so it may damage other people's image. And once your image is destroyed nobody cares. For reputed member it won't cause anything. But imagine some alts making a thread saying you or me is alt account of him. Forget about thread, a seller is not a fool. He may tell you this in PM. Then later screenshots it?

The best way to stop account selling is already there. There are many reputed members who are always checking accounts for suspicious activity. And if they see any they sure would tag them.

Why do you think people sell and buy bitcointalk accounts?

To do signature campaign, right? So instead of focusing on, who bought what, you should focus on signature campaign. To be specific, campaign manager should make strict rules. Maybe do some modifications, readjustments.

Selling bitcoin Talk accounts is not a fair thing to do but a legal offence, regardless of who is the seller or the buyer. Both are doing an impractical job. Why choose the wrong way when a job can be done the right way? Meaning, if you have come to learn something, then there is no question that you will leave without learning something. In other words, people get knowledge from the beginning on this forum, but some fools read in the thought of earning without collecting or learning knowledge, and similar people buy Bitcoin talk-ready accounts only for money. Later, due to not knowing anything, the accounts of these people were also banned. So what is the benefit of this thing? You earn money from signatures for some time, and then it ends.

Although those people do not know that the account grows on the basis of knowledge, its earnings are permanent and forever, and it does not present any problem in the forum, i.e., from bans, etc., and everyone looks at it from a respective point of view. Are So, it means that you should not waste your time and knowledge to earn money for a short period of time, but by running accounts properly, you will learn knowledge and earn money automatically.

There is no full-proof way to stop account sellers and buyers because the buyers are the ones who want to earn money from the signature campaigns as they can't rank up their account in the traditional way because they aren't competent enough to earn any merits. The sellers are mostly frauds and whenever they sell an account the buyer will get tagged because we have some very smart guys on forum who can detect sold account with their knowledge and tools.

The ones who believe in account farming often try to buy the already ranked up account and in order to do that they will create new accounts and contact the sellers who are selling those accounts. The buyers will try their best to hide their identity and their real account in almost every way and it's almost impossible to find those buyers unless they make some humanly mistakes which they probably will make most of the times.

The wrong path is always risky and if someone wants to choose it then that person has to bear the consequences. The account selling isn't accepted in this forum and is a highly disliked thing and anyone who sells or buys accounts is taking a very wrong step which could ruin his/her original account.

Account sells is not prohibited but it is discouraged, so it doesn't actually worth it to begin the process discussed above. It will lead to so many drama. This is because of you set up an advert pretending to buy an account and finally you discover the account seller. The accusations could be that you are a real account buyer but things went wrong and you decided to cast the whole process. I don't know if anyone is understanding me.

If accounts smoothly changes hand, there shouldn't be a problem with that but if it happens in a shady manner, the account should be tagged and that will be fine. Going extra miles to catch account buyers and sellers is not worth it.

Account trading isn't prohibited, so I think there is no need to think about going to the trouble of trapping the perpetrator. Their initiative is clearly not to contribute to the forum, there is a big sign that is visible. Let them spend some of their money on useless accounts (after changing hands). They just activate their own time bomb to get caught, then do the same thing over and over again until they give up.

Unfortunately, account buying and selling transactions are not carried out on the forum. They are not that stupid and they definitely make transactions on Telegram. I saw a thread on the reputation board that buying and selling accounts can be determined by differences in language or knowledge. It is not easy to identify buying and selling accounts, but some can still be caught


Of course half of the total members or maybe more will leave this forum. But it was a suicidal act, the signature campaign was very helpful in introducing bitcoin. From this campaign we were able to get our first bitcoin and that's where we started to become interested in bitcoin. Maybe for now many members still consider the campaign as a livelihood, but as time goes by they will hold onto their bitcoins. The more people who know about Bitcoin, the better. Of course there are always those who take advantage of circumstances to cheat, I think it happens everywhere, because the concept of idealism will forever be utopian.

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The longer I write, the less I know what I'm writing about 

If people where found in this kind of activities, then their bubbles always get caught up within a short period of time they least expect, because it will definitely show a change of hands on the account, from such you can discover from the user way of postings pattern, email used and the password reset that might have been conducted on such account, all these are possible through the help of the ninjastic threads to help in tracking the account past records, what i don't seem to understand is the reason behind doing this by some of the people.

While I do agree that feedback of some members has more weight (and some less due their tendency to leave all sorts of questionable feedbacks) I don't think that it has to do with DT1/DT2 status but rather with reputation of those members.

I honestly don't see how its different if account seller gets tagged by a DT1 member or DT2 member and would really like to see the example of what you are talking about. I mean, since account sale is not forbidden by forum rules, all we can do is tag them and then its up to them to decide whether they will continue selling or not.

Yes, most likely that is the case now, seen some who still continue to sell accounts and they don't care if they are getting negative tag because it really doesn't have any effect on on them. And for most DT members, just a waste of time for them. And if one account is getting tag, comes 2 or even more accounts popping up to continue to sell.

The only solution is to outright ban account sellers, but as I have said, they will just create more accounts and willing to pay for it. And then continue what they've used to. And as long as there are account buyers, this sellers are going to stay here.

I think that there is a clear difference between DT1 and all other levels of the DT system, because it is more than clear that my feedback does not have the same weight as the identical feedback of one of the respectable DT1 members. Their lack of interest (with some exceptions, of course) first of all encourages sellers and buyers, and creates an image of some kind of situation that can be defined as "I don't really care about it".


Perhaps the problem is that most DT1 members do not visit the board where such topics are found, and although it is true that there are not dozens of such topics, at least one or two new ones appear every week.

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There is no need for any analysis, if you see that someone is selling or wants to buy a BTT account, the matter is completely clear - you are obviously mixing the fight against plagiarism and AI with what we are discussing.


This is something that was discussed a lot, but we all know that without sig campaigns this forum would look completely different and it would probably lose a lot of members. It is an extreme measure, but it should also be emphasized that it is one of the measures on the table in case nothing else can help.

From what I've seen: the majority of account "sellers" are just scammers, sometimes with a few Newbie accounts "vouching" for them. But I've also seen at least one escrow who handled account sales, so it's still possible.
And there are of course Newbies who just PM someone asking to buy their account.

I've also seen a post saying: "My account is for sale for 21,000,001 Bitcoin".

That's not how it works

I mean first of all if someone is selling any account he won't be disclosing the original account to be sold and otherwise no one will buying it and second the one who's buying who disclose his original information for oblivious reason. So even if we create such trap won't be catching any one for sure.

Secondly, account trading issue is quite complicated. If you go after the sellers, it might stop some new accounts created just for selling, but the ones already selling might continue. If we target the buyers, it could reduce the demand, but determined sellers might still find ways to sell accounts. So, it's not a simple problem with one clear solution.

Anyway, instead if we start teaching ethics that might work faster  

So the abuse is still not handled right since we don't have demerit and stoppage of merit source?

To be honest I don't think merit source is the problem because they have a lot merit and it's fair for them to support their local boards etc. The problem is non merit sources, they easily abuse it after they get many merit from merit sources.

There's no proof if merit abuse is always merit selling and if you tag someone because they only abusing merit system, you will not become a DT member anymore which mean such action is destroy yourself.

theymos knows there will be dark markets for merit but he does not feel big problems with merit sales.

It is not good but not like a thing will destroy Bitcointalk and abuse can be handled by demerit or take the merit source position back. Merit transactions are public and merit sales, merit abuse can be seen by everyone with Bitcointalk Merit Ledger.

Yeah can you imagine me buying an account with this account, not happening ever unless my password was hacked..

At op account buying was okay years ago. Now its not okay as it allows someone to earn more at campaigns.
There will always be account sellers and there will always be account sellers.
And the smart ones won’t be caught.

Yes, I know a little about DT. Is there anything wrong about that? Or do you think that I, who is still an FM, can't read the mechanisms and how the forum works? JG, nutildah, lovesmyfamily, and others seem to have good abilities in analyzing things like that

Yes, most members don't care because they only care about the signature campaign they are involved in. Maybe if there were no signature campaigns then the forum would be clean and the ones who would survive would be members who like to discuss. So the best way to deal with buying and selling accounts, spammers, scammers, and trollers, is to remove signature and bounty campaigns. 

No one would risk their main accounts when selling and buying accounts, so they usually use brand new/newbie accounts. The same time to trap sellers on what accounts are going to sold, since anyone can say that any account are currently on sale. Unless, they provide signed message that they really owned the account but i don't think they will go further than that.

At first you are a senior member in this forum you should have known the appropriate place to site your post, some times I became confused in some of accounts that asked questions on where to drop their post or not...in the aspect of selling account, forum did not forbids selling of accounts from my perspective but their is something involved in selling of account.

People who sells account doesn't reveal themselves that they want to sell their account because tag and neutral in their profile, the thing is that, the area I'm against of selling of account is that the original owner of the account you are interested to buy might be a developer or a programmer and it has already built its reputation comfortably with people

And it happens that the person who is coming to buy or buying the account doesn't know anything concerning developing a website or coin and programming, so handling such account that he or she knows nothing in that aspect, it will be disgusting and discouraging when you cross check the quality of the writeup...

So while people is being tag on account they bought is because  they misused the account in future and they may commit fraud with the account, because people may contact them thinking that it's rightful owner of the account whereas the account have changed hand by a scammer or spammer in the forum...so from my theory is encouraging for someone to start from scratch and build it's account instead buying another person's account.

I am still processing, how these deals would be taken place at the first place, I mean, ok, hypothetically speaking if I want to buy a account, whom I have to contact, who is the dealer, and why would I not give a red tag to that dealer and all the accounts that I can ask him to show me, so I could think for a second which one is better for me.

Is there any account trades recently caught, I don't think so, and I did not see many red trusted, or bad neutral tagged members joining the signature campaigns, and those who are joined, are the ones, that are trusted by the whole forum, like even the royse himself has 1 or 2 negative, many other reputed people have negative trust.

But those who got negative, are rarely accepted in any signature or bounty campaigns.

That won't accomplish anything. Anyone can create hundreds of newbie accounts and use them to buy forum accounts.


Even if they have a "main" account on the forum, there is no way for someone to force them to reveal it.

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Haha! Exactly! It would be like a game of "he said, she said" where anyone can start pretending to be a buyer or seller. Good luck figuring out who's telling the truth.

can you imagine the comedy that will unfold if two people who are pretending to be an account buyer/seller to catch an account buyer/seller accidentally talked to each other and try to expose one another 😂

exactly, and I've seen a number of threads created by people complaining about being scammed when they are trying to buy an account.

Does it really matter whether account seller is tagged by DT1 or DT2 member?


Hunting account sellers is not like hunting alt accounts as all you can really do is wait for them to create account sale topic to tag them, and its not like there's load of these topics anyway.

Do you know what DT is and which DT members are "working hard" on that problem? It used to be possible to buy and sell BTT accounts without any sanctions, then people started getting red tags only if they asked if it was possible to buy a BTT account, and today there are members who sell BTT accounts for months without having a single red tag from DT1 members. I would conclude that the majority simply do not care and do not want to spend their time on such things.

Yes, I know that the forum does not facilitate or controlling buying and selling accounts. btw, what do you mean by saying I used a cheat?

Theymos will not agree with the legalization of buying and selling accounts but it also cannot prohibit buying and selling accounts. So I don't think there is a better solution. Currently DT is working hard to identify buying and selling accounts, so I think the existing system is good. Let the forum take care of all this

Other than the fact that this has been tried before and didn't work out, who is going to set up the trap accounts? Moderators, admin or just any user? It is definitely going to cause more harm than good and i'm pretty sure one should have better things doing with their time than controlling "trap accounts" to catch account sellers/buyers.

It is quite difficult to hide forever from a bought account, some are even caught within the first few weeks after buying the account, i think this alone is a deterrent, because you risk spending a lot of money only to see the account tagged a few weeks later. I know that despite this, users still buy accounts, but only a few can manage to stay completely out of the radar and not be caught either due to change in posting style/pattern, language improvement or downgrade, etc

I agree with this, nowadays campaigns ask you for a minimum of merits in the last 120, or at least tell you that you have to be active, things like that. So even if you buy the account, you won't be able to monetise it from day one, although it will probably cost you less time. Monetizing an account that you create from 0 is going to cost you at least 9 months, while a purchased account can start to be amortized in a month. That is if the person who sells it to you doesn't scam you or if some DTs don't realise that it's a purchased account and red tag you, so for me it's not worth it either (apart from the fact that it's ethically incorrect).

Account sales can never stop, and I don't think it's worth the trouble. If people can sell accounts on strict platforms where it's prohibited and need even KYC then how about Bitcointalk where multiple accounts are allowed?
Remember, selling of Bitcointalk accounts doesn't only happen in the forum, but there are other third party sites where adverts are made as well. How are you going to track and stop all that?

Lastly, the account sellers won't just reveal the details of the account until they receive some money from you.

Account selling is not that much an issue nowadays since there’s only fee user selling and most of them has a record of scamming so no one trusted them already. Also there’s no trusted escrow that accept this kind of deal anymore so dealing with account sellers is always discourage.

The merit system make account seller impossible nowadays while most of the campaigns has a tough competition for participants so buying someone account is already useless because you will need to start from scratch. It’s better to create account and rank up naturally by posting constructive post for a better chance on campaign acceptance. Account selling is not a major issue anymore.

Indeed. It has been tried, and lead to drama. Don't go there, it's not worth it.

This forum isn't controlling the price, either high or not, it's not change a fact someone who bought an account is using cheat to have a high rank account. Having KYC rule in this forum surely will make people to leave this forum.

Remember Bitcointalk is a place to discuss about Bitcoin, not purely as a place to work or making money.

If theymos not agree with merit selling, I don't think he will agree to legalize it.

Are you kidding me? If you do that then your account will be tagged. One way to prevent buying and selling accounts is to prohibit it, or legalize it with a high minimum price. Or use KYC so that 1 person only has 1 account. However, this forum is an reedom forum by limiting it, we destroy freedom in this forum, the current system is good and nothing needs to be changed.

Account sales usually happen off the forum. The account seller puts up an ad and asks anyone interested to chat them on telegram or some other platform then they complete the trade there. In this case the user does not reveal their forum account throughout the trade, they just need to send the payment to the seller and wait for confirmation.

What could work is to try to identify accounts which are owned by sellers and tag them. But the farms are so big that even if you tagged a hundred it will not make a significant difference and you cannot be certain the seller owns the account till you pay at which time I believe they send you the proof of ownership (emails and password).

Overall, it's not worth the stress you will go through and you will not get cinclusve results.

I agree with @hugeblack. Most people who buy accounts will only end up being scammed. They are not aware of this even though they have been warned many times.

You can get rid of one seller. But does that guarantee there are no other sellers? It may be the same seller.

 It's not an easy something and it's not like they will want to expose themselves because as long as there's anonymity in the forum, those doing this can come with a different username, enter the forum and who knows stumble on this suggestion you gave and may get guarded, don't you think?
Account buying is not accepted and as such those who are doing it won't just leave tracks that are easy to trace. This suggestion you gave is just one out of many that have been given but the stuff still happens right? Let's say the suggestion given by @lucius might help this cause if many take it to heart.
 

You think no one has tried that? What seems to me is that there are people who have hundreds (if not thousands) of BTT accounts and know that by selling them they can make a very nice profit. Whoever touched that mafia found themselves on their target (including me personally), and fighting them is like fighting cockroaches and bedbugs, they are very resistant and keep coming back again and again.

The only thing we can do is to really work to discourage those who want to buy BTT accounts by tagging sellers, but also buyers who do it publicly. It would be best if the forum clearly prohibits such things and those who offer such services are permanently removed from the forum.

One example of the fight against the Account Mafia

There have been a few cases where users go undercover and we’re able to uncover accounts that were supposed to be sold, but if you carefully access the whole situation you’ll see that they are so many things that could go wrong.

Take for example, I busted a large account farming and in other for them to get their revenge on me, they decide to come to the forum create an account sales thread and then list my account there or just create the thread waiting for anyone (let’s say the undercover person) to message them and during the course of their discussion my account was showed to the person(the undercover) and eventually he comes to the forum and create a thread against my account for being sold or hacked, how do you think I’ll be able to defend myself?

If anyone wants to go undercover so that they can fish out account that are being sold then they can do it quietly and not make loud noise about it, because if you make it obvious then scammers will just take advantage of it and use it to punish those that have hunted them in the past.

Catch which account buyers? Are they a group of people who are just waiting for the sale? Oh no, they are not. Most people here know about this forum as a means of making money, and those who gave them that information have educated them that if you can get a higher-ranking account, you will start getting paid for that account. Now, the person who was introduced with the mindset that accounts can't be getting started looking for means to get a higher rank account, and this person can't be a group of people; they come to look for accounts to buy based on when they get the information. So we can't catch all of them at once, and more people who are going to buy accounts will also continue coming.
 
If there is even going to be a solution, it should be that there should be a close watch attached to old Bitcointalk accounts that are inactive; that's those accounts created in the years 2014–2018 and 2019. If the users are no longer active, at least a few such accounts should be created, and a close eye should be on them. Based on my observation of the accounts that either got a neutral tag or a red tag for account buying, it always appears that most of those accounts are very old accounts that the owners don't make use of again, which makes them prey for hackers, and they already got the required merit airdropped to them to make them rank.
 
If there can be a close mark on such accounts, seeing anyone with a long post sleeping and waking up, we can always question the credibility of such accounts for the owner to prove ownership. If that can be taken seriously and inside 10 bought accounts we can be sure of catching 5–6 of them, then the rate at which people buy will definitely reduce, but it can't be stopped because not all those buyers are aware of how much the forum is against it.

I don’t think they will stop, you will see some account advertising publicly that they sell bitcoin account. You still see many people buying this accounts even though they know that they will get tag. So if such people can persist in this act then this your idea will not aid any positive result. I also doubt it will lead to exposing their original accounts. This account buyers won’t stop no matter the scheme deployed.

The buying of account doesn’t seems to be prohibited by the forum rules just like it is frowned upon by members because of the scam, so this isn’t a Meta discussion but rather scam board discussion

I think that most of the accounts that are sold either have negative trust, natural trust related to spam, or scam in which you pay the money and will not get an account. it is difficult to say that there is active trade in selling accounts, especially since if the account is good, you can achieve +$160 per month and thus The minimum account price is supposed to be $500+, and the higher price = fewer buyers.

It is not something worth digging deeply into, and the best solution may be to tighten the conditions for joining signature campaigns, bounty campaigns, and obtaining loans.

This only raise a new drama.

Remember DT members will leave negative feedback to an account that's not only changed hands, but they will leave negative feedback to the buyer or someone who have interest to buy. Let's say you're want do that and you create a new thread if you catch someone sell his account, you could get tagged too.

What if there's a troll who want to destroy someone else reputation?

Bob: Hey I want to buy Sr member rank, how much it is? can I know the username?
Alice: Yes the rate is $999,999,999, the username is blckhawk.

Imagine you're Bob, you will create a new thread and accuse blckhawk's account is the seller account, what do you think?

You think anyone who wants to buy account will reveal their main account
Knowing too well how bad it's to buy account here, well I won't argue because I don't know how smart they could be but know one thing that the only solution to this is to asked any account that was suspected to change to sign a message with a wallet they have used for at least 2 years and above, whomever that can't do that is assume that the account was bought by so doing it should be tag. Account sale is something that could be too hard to stop because anyone can decide to sell his account for another better jobs after feeling tired of the forum or doesn't want to associate themselves with here.

Someone should create a trap account that advertises itself as someone who sells forum accounts so we can once and for all mark the account buyers, I don't know if it's a weird solution but if we can also cull the account buyers itself then we can ultimately discourage the selling itself because if the buyers are afraid that they might be dealing with a narc then that would mean that they're going to have second-thoughts about buying an account which in turn lessens the demand which discourages sellers. It's also foolproof too if the one who does the entrapment is smart enough to lead on the buyer to their main account which is the likely thing that's going to happen.

PS. I don't know if this is the appropriate board for this so bear with me, I know how to move the topic so just tell me where.