Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone!
Like is stated on the title.. I have a few questions about the benefit/allowance of having multi-accounts on the forum, since I saw this is allowed.
What is the purpose of having multiple accounts (alt/alts) on this forum?
And why is this allowed in the first place? I find it kind of weird.. at least.

Bitcoin and this forum are made with keeping privacy in anonymity in mind. Though the site keeps a log of your IP and can be forced to reveal it when legally asked to, it maintains the privacy in every other circumstances. That's why it doesn't stop multiple accounts as stopping that would risk the privacy.

The reasons why people create multiple ids could range from bounty hunting to having a different approach of thought. Every IDs have their personality and many people loves to have every side of their mind online. Sometimes the multiple IDs could be a work ID and a private ID.

There are many reasons people are using multiple accounts.

1. Users suspended because of violating Forum rules. As a result people are creating multiple accounts and run their campaign.
2. People are scared by the strict forum rules and feel vulnerable.
3. It is quite risky to post on site like gambling, giveaway, lottery, micro-earning, ICO and airdrop promotion and other likely scam.

It don't find reason to use multiple account. Posting same message on different sites looks spammy.

Participating same project with multiple times using multiple accounts can be seen as an offense. Do your own judgement by having secondary accounts. There are sophisticated technology already available to find cheaters like ip address checking etc.

Only way to earn more by having more followers not more accounts.

When I signed in I though it was weird as hell too, and even pondered why KYC was not enforced to delimit the creation of Alt accounts (newbies …).

I have another account that I use to scrape data from the forum. I do not want to use my main account for that, lest it be banned for scraping at some point, thus the Alt account. Generally speaking, people use Alt accounts to:

-   Participate in multiple campaigns on the forum. This is allowed, providing you are ethical (i.e. the accounts don’t participate in the same campaing simultaneously, thet don’t merit each other, they don’t create fake conversations amongst themselves, etc.).

-   Distinguish when they are using the main account from another one from which they participate in a less demanding manner (i.e. using a phone with fat fingers will normally lead to shorter elaborated posts, and that may differ from the style one wants on his main account).

-   Participate in a conversation without unveiling their main account, for fear of retaliation against their main account.

-   Try to bypass bans (which they are not allowed to, except for appealing on Meta).

-   Etc.

Now obviously people do create multiple accounts for the wrong reasons: trying to scam, bumping services (not really worth it now on the boards where it makes sense), creating a farm of accounts that merit each other and/or participate in the same campaign simultaneously, creating account to try to sell them off later on, etc.

It is what I found with forum search. Keywords used are: alt accounts + theymos




Wait me for while.

Some create alt accounts and use it to indicate whether they are in front of their computer, on mobile, or somewhere.

Examples:
Main account: theymos (Alt account: theymos_away)
Main account: LoyceV (Alt account: LoyceMobile)

I think another important reason for an alt account is, that not everyone has a secure internet connection everywhere they go. Using an alt account can mainly have security purposes. Would you like to login with your 5 year-old legendary main account from a public wifi via a mobile phone? Sure not. Using a lower ranked alt account, could be a good alternative.

Nevertheless you are right, most spammers/scammers use alt accounts to bypass bans and to enroll in most bounty campaigns as possible.

I'm a prime culprit in this. My main account is Jet Cash, and there ase historic reasons for me starting with this, and I use this for crypto projects. I'm also active in a few other forums, and I use Kuffy on most of those. I reg'd it as an alt here to protect the identity. Talk Merit was used to support the Fit to Talk English project. Flash Cunt was used to play with TMAN, but I don't really use that much now. Baronets is my domain name holding company, and I'll probably use that to sell some crypto domain names here.

Most of the alts are of member rank or better, and Kuffy just needs a bit of activity to join that list. I like to get the accounts up to at least member rank so that I can use the signatures for various personal projects. I have never joined any signature campaigns.

The problem here is that most users are abusing this privilege that you can't find on other forums.
This forum allows the use of alts mainly for the sake of privacy. Whereas the majority of alt accounts are used to cheat bounty campaigns, scam/spam, ban evading... which is a real shame.

Quite a few other forums allow multiple accounts, but they often require the declaration of the association. I believe that this should be a rule here as well. There are several members who have one account fr use with a mobile, or when travelling, and another for use with a desktop. Another handy use relates to ignore lists. Jet Cash has got quite a few members on ignore, it is useful to have a different account to review the current posting behaviour to see if they should be removed from the ignore list.

The main reason is freedom. Freedom is good, right? Maybe you want an account to do business with here but you also want another where you can post your own personal opinions on or discus politics without it possibly effecting your sales or business. The other reason is disallowing it is hard to police and enforce effectively. Basically anyone can evade a ban just by using a proxy unless you use other measures like browsers fingerprinting which this forum doesn't and probably never will, so accounts are allowed as long as you don't break the forum rules with them or use them to evade a ban.


I don't think this should be required. Many people do self-out their alts but at the same time people should be free to have private ones for whatever reason, just as long as they're not used for abuse.

I can agree with a good part of what is stated in previous posts, and it definitely makes sense to me that for some situations an alt account is quite appropriate. I'm not personally logging into this forum on my smartphone, but if I were to do that, I'd definitely make an alt account for security reasons.

I understand some other reasons for alt accounts, but I personally do not support using alt accounts and participating in signature campaigns (regardless of the fact that this is not the same campaign), because if one user takes say 3 places in 3 different sig campaigns, is it fair to someone else? From an ethical and moral standpoint it is definitely not, but the world is a cruel place, and the forum is no exception.

Are you sure it's not because they are affraid to send their password through an insecure network instead?
I thought it was for this reason. If they only want to show they're currently not in front of their computer they could indicate it in their signature or Personal Text.

No, I'm not really sure of the reason (I should have added "probably" there). What you said makes more sense given that they are security freaks (I believe) or we could be both wrong. Anyway, I'm just adding another reason why some users have alt accounts.

Correct. My phone is less secure than my PC. My LoyceBot (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=949024) is even worse: I've used it on more than one VPS.

Alt accounts are not a problem in this forum for various reasons. But if the alt account is used to follow the signature campaign as you mean, I also disagree.
Because when a Jubilee signature campaign many alt accounts are used by others, even though the campaigns that are followed are different, one person participates in various campaigns and manages several accounts at the same time. looks unfair and tries to get as much money as possible using multiple accounts.

Moreover, we have another reason: We can not see trust and feedback and Flag (?) if we don't log in forum account. If we want to investigate trustworthy of one account, we have to log in our account but due to security and privacy protection, we don't want to log in main account on mobile. It is very useful if one user spend most of time in Scam accusation child board.

In addition, it is difficult to stay away from the forum if we are addicted to it, even when we are on bed. Alt for mobile is good.

This is another reason some reputable users have their alts for usages on mobile only.

Lol. Those accounts as with this one are the ones we use when we're on the toilet. In all seriousness, people have accounts like those when they're using unsecure wifi and connections that can't be trusted 100%. Would be pretty worrisome if theymos logged onto the ublic wifi at Starbucks and got his account compromised  ;D.


That's partially why I have my other hilarious* (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1424594) account. I don't really use it but I have it logged into another computer I use and sometimes I might PM info from one account to the other if I need it for whatever reason.

 

Heaven knows what TMAN's toilet account would be. :)

Yeah it's weird but it becomes normal when the money talks already kick in lol ;D. Like on one point of DdmrDdmr, alt accounts particularly Full Members and up are used for maximizing their earnings here in the forum. I knew some people who are like this but in all fairness I can feel they're not just only doing it for the sake of money. They still do their best on making valuable posts and healthy conversations here. In short, they are not acting bots despite of having multiple accounts. Well some might say that it sounds greedy, yes it does lol but still the decency was there :).

But for me, 1 account is already enough because it's very challenging to have an alter ego. 

People are of two types, ones who use it and others who abuse it.

Users are those who use alts to post their tweets/fb post links/reports and keep their main account clean and free from all this stuff. These people either openly declare or keep it hidden under the hoods that they are using an alt, but they never commit any shady activity from such account(s) and never ask for any loans, never scam and never spam.

Abusers are those who don't give a fuck to rules of the forum and just abuse bounties, signature campaigns and exploit any earning opportunities available here, and spam the shit out of their tens of hundreds of accounts created with the sole purpose of the same. And such accounts also get nuked very quick because we have a team of enthusiastic spam-cum-scambusters who don't let these abusers leave empty handed from the forum and gift them a permaban forever.

Thanks for the kind answers guys, I didn't expected this amount of replies. :)
Now this makes sense (kind of..) of having more accounts, if you use the forum for more than a talk (talk politics, sell goods, participate in multiple campaigns, use of mobile bitcointalk, etc).
If I had more sMerits I would have merited all, but since I had only had one I merited the 1st one who replied, who happened to have the less merits, so I think he needed it the most.
Thanks again!

Well now you have got a couple of alt Merits ( gives you another sMerit), so you can find another guy to reward. It's probably best to find someone in another topic though.

One of the most important reason why people have multiple account is the fear of bring banned from the forum
Secondary, I learnt that some hunters in the forum focused  focus their main accounts in helping and contributeing
To the growth of the forum. This can be trance down to say that most most people having multiple account is
1. Bounty Huntering Purposes
2. For Scamming purposes
3. For Forum Growth
4. For Business purposes ( i.e Sell them off to make money )
5. Fear of being Banned while participating in Campaign

1. Bounty Huntering Purposes
This I got it. Is understandable, if you want to join more bounty providers.

2. For Scamming purposes
I see. I agree that not everyone on the planet is a good person.

3. For Forum Growth
Well personally I think the forum is big enough, it doesn't need alts to grow activity, not anymore.

4. For Business purposes ( i.e Sell them off to make money )
Got it. I did not think of this purpose.

5. Fear of being Banned while participating in Campaign
I think if will get ban on one account, you will get on the second one too because you will do the same mistake, sooner or later.

There are several acceptable reasons i can think off, many of which have already been discussed, but some of the reasons i can think off have not yet been brought up (at least, i quickly scanned the thread, i did not read every single reply in detail):

• Anonimity: i think it's perfectly fine to have an account that's completely anonymous, and a second account you use to do business, participate in raffles, attach to domain names,...)
• Security: an account with a weak password for public pc's, cellphones, travel Wifi's,... and a main account with a strong password
• Brand recognition: i have a client with multiple accounts, one for each big project he starts... Once again, perfectly fine by me
• Name reservation: i think it would be perfectly fine to reserve your name (your real name or business name), even if you don't use the account... Just to avoid scammers to use your name to scam others
• Unwanted, but legal behaviour: there are some kinds of behaviour that aren't really likeable, like cursing... Maybe you feel like ridiculing somebody but don't want other's to shun you, so you use an alt account... It's a bit sketchy, but i'd still call this borderline acceptable

Offcourse, alt accounts for scamming, spamming, self bumping, cheating,... should be kicked off the forum. However, there are plenty of good reasons to have an alt imho

Some users are creating a mobile version of their account or their username plus (away) to give people ideas that they are not home or to be precise, they cannot use their PC because they are off work somewhere. some users create an alt account to make some posts about bounty topic and when they often make some new bounty topic, some of them create a new account.

This is a good point for having a second account in here. Understandable.

That is why I registered Kuffy, but then I sediced that I might as well use it. It gives me a second signature for use with one of my pricate sites.