Bitcoin Forum

It's baffling that selling accounts on this forum is allowed, but we ban the selling of merit.  Can we please take a serious look into banning account trading?

If they ban account trading/sales, ,then it will just move underground. At least here, we can sometimes see who is buying what and flag them as needed. In short, there is no good answer but to let it happen, here where we can hopefully keep track better.

We don't ban the selling of merit, people just frown upon it, the same way they do the selling of accounts. An exactly as owlcatz said, there is no way to enforce any rules against the sale of accounts. If we ban the 1 in 10 we catch, the 9 that make it through the cracks will be able to do more damage to people who don't consider the possibility that an account has been sold, because its not allowed. Its more productive to just tell everyone that it is openly allowed, and to be vigilant.

By the way, some guys who bought account for bounty may be OK and even start an interesting discussions. At least they aren't a bots and can generate the content.

Members selling accounts are already getting negative trust. Their account becomes useless if they created it for participating in signature campaigns.

It beats them using accounts to scam newbies as well.


Exactly...

Some things to look for if you suspect that an account has been sold:

1. Long time no activity on the account.
This does not have to mean that the account has changed hands but if it is a user who is usually active and then suddenly stops being active for no apparent reason that could be a sign. Of course real life issues, health, family etc have to be considered. This can easily be checked by the administration looking at IP logs. Unless the account owner has moved its not his account anymore.

2. Different avatar/logo/signature
If you have gotten used to seeing the same signature/avatar of a user for long time and suddenly it gets changed maybe the account has changed its owner. Especially if payment addresses are suddenly different.

3. The User's writing quality changes
This is something that can be noticed very easily. We all have our own way in which we express ourselves, write and talk and now imagine if there is a drastic change in the style, that would be an obvious sign!?
A user who had limited English skills in the past suddenly writes in Perfect English.
Or a user who always made a lot of spelling mistakes now writes like he is on an exam.

4. Requests for money/favours/loans/weird PMs/Mails
This is kind of self explanatory - especially for users with a high rank.

Just felt like I should mention this since it feels bad getting scammed so keep your eyes open. Especially when money is involved trust your gut feeling.

Cheers

This is one of the easiest ways to spot such accounts. Most of people involved in selling do not care about quality of posts and made posts just to reach the desired activity for ranks.

True
but it doesn't have to be about reaching a rank. The problem starts when those accounts start getting used to scam people. Used for escrow, trusted/private information etc

Who said that it is allowed. Just because some members do this, it does not mean that buying and selling accounts is allowed. They should be banned, only red trsut is not enough for them.

Name one. And you do not need to buy an account to start "an interesting discussions". You can simply create one, even as a newbie.

No content > Shitty content.

Let me ask one question in connection to this thread, if selling account is not allowed, (though many do it), is it okay to pass an account to any other relative/s?

No payment  exchange had been done, is there a process wherein you will inform the admin about this thing??????!?

Once again, account selling is allowed, so pass it onto your mailman if you'd like, you don't need to tell the admins.

As what Mr. SaltySpitoon said, there's no big deal whether you sell or intentionally gave your account to someone, but here's a reminder, make sure first that your prospective buyer or the one who will inherit your account already have knowledge in cryptoworld or at least orient him/her about the do's and don'ts here in the forum because there's a tendency that he/she will mess up here which results to getting neg trust rates or ban at worst case. If it happens then the account will be wasted for nothing.

Forum policy: "We can't stop everyone from doing it, so we won't disallow it."
I guess we can't stop everyone from murdering others, so we won't disallow that either. Oh wait.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

---

For the administration, >90% of account sales would be trivial to catch and could done with somewhat simple scripts.

And I said the consequences are the same.. where? It pretty much applies for any kind of felony. We can't stop all of them from occurring so we won't make them illegal? What.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

How many new accounts have you seen buying or selling accounts? Why do you think they are new, throw away accounts?
It will be the same way with Merit: behind the scenes buying/selling of Hero and Legendary accounts at a new premium for the Merits and rank with little to no knowledge of the community.
It's good you keep tabs on a sold account but that is a rare action here.

people who buy account might want an instant way to own account since it is so difficult to make new account of bitcointalk forum.

Click on the register button. Try a username. If it's used, try to create one that would be unused on the forum. Fill in the password/email forms. Complete the captchas.

Create.

---

See, that wasn't so hard now, was it?

I think he meant getting an account with higher rank. Otherwise he might be doing something silly like creating multiple accounts from his system one by one.

Perhaps I should have added [tone=sarcasm] as a prefix to my reply...

I thought it was obvious. ;)

---

I greatly frown upon those that purchase accounts to get a higher rank. The only reason for doing that is to participate in bounties/signature campaigns straight-off and I don't think that should be the main reason that people go to Bitcointalk. Of course, I'll probably be called a hypocrite for wearing a signature myself—apparently, that makes my opinion completely invalid.