Bitcoin Forum

is it considered generally bad form to sell off hero member accounts?

Yes it's frowned upon but really as long as you don't disclose the account your selling there's not much that can be done to stop it.

A lot of people consider it bad form and will actually leave negative feedback on the account if they know it or they are trying to sell one. That's why people usually create a new throw-away account to sell it so the account can remain anonymous until sold.

I have no problem if you say it's sold and you sell it to someone legit not some scammer who will just use your rank/rep to scam people.

For me personally it depends on the reason of selling/buying. As long as people use it for signature campaigns I don't really mind. Sad enough the accounts are often used for scamming as well.

Can't these accounts be recovered by the seller?
He can always write to the mod saying that his account was hacked, and prove it by using one of his bitcoin addresses.
That way the buyer has to be careful.

Yes they can.


And often the people buying them get scammed as well, especially if they don't use escrow, but also because they're easily recoverable by PMing theymos.

Ahaa.. I do see hero accounts with huge negative trust rating. So one always has to be careful.

I doubt that. My previous account got hacked during the bitcointalk.org hack last year. I PMed Theymos a few times about recovering my account, including loads of evidence that I actually owned the account, but he never responded. Someone ended up getting scammed for 12 BTC by my hacked account :S

Did you sign a message proving you owned the account as he seems to ignore the requests if they cant provide the proper stuff needed to prove ownership.

That sucks, this forum really need a way to recover password..

Well technically there is a way to recover your password, but the hacker also changed the email address.

Of course, a hacker would change your email address as well.
Refer this thread to find out how you can recover your account.


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497545.0

The hacker can edit/delete all posts with previously used adresses, so there is a good chance you have no way to recover your account, unless you posted only in the altcoins giveaways locked threads for a while, and delete that posts = lower greatly your activity.

@OP: it is no more bad as selling other type of accounts, but let others know about that is plain dumb, because they will neg rape your account.

I don't agree with the ability to sell accounts. Especially hero accounts.  Who knows what they are going to do with them.  I dont think there are that many sold. It takes too much time and effort to get to hero status.

Like it or not, you are officially allowed to do so by the powers that be of this Forum
So the question of bad form is academic

I don't really care, but if you are selling, never use the actual account you are selling to say that you are selling. Make a fake account to use that, so that no one will know the account was sold. People will usually leave negative feedback, and won't trust you if you say your selling your account, so be secretive. Selling is a great way to exit this forum, as you are left with a lot of money!

For a hero member, he has to surf through a lot of posts.  ;D

I would sell my account for the right price but I wouldn't hide the fact that I did so.  I haven't given the issue a ton of thought but I think if you make the transaction public you really can't be blamed for what happens after the fact.  Just my 2 Satoshis.

If you didn't hide the fact the account would very likely be neg-bombed by someone if they found out about it, defeating the purpose of buying/selling the account in the first place as it becomes useless for signature campaigns.

I think theymos can recover deleted posts and view PMs. The hackers cannot skim through the whole post history and delete every single address. It would be really inefficient. I'm not sure if it works but you can try to PM some trusted members when you discover that you are hacked and ask them to neg bomb the trust and they have lesser chance of pulling off a scam.

If you are thinking about selling, I request you not to do it as the buyer may scam people.


Couldn't you prove the ownership? Didn't you sign msg? 2FA is coming in new forum, it will give more security :) . IMO, an approval mail should be sent to the corresponding email of the account if there is change in email address, gives better security, unless it changed by Theymos or Badbear(Mostly when recovering account)

Kindly,
      MZ

The easiest way is to send a PM to defaulttrust mentioning your address, write down the PM ID, and delete the PM in your account while defaulttrust will keep it forever.

If the account seller publishes the sale, the account will likely get loads of negative trust making the account useless for scamming or sig campaign. So very likely the account buyer will ask you to keep the deal secret.

That is a very simple method. It should be in a sticky thread in the newbie section (if it already isn't).  :)

Huh,  I thought there was a stop to putting negative rep on accounts for no good reason.  But I guess I misunderstood how that works.  This isn't a topic I'm very knowledgeable of really just thought selling accounts was the norm but still a hot button issue for those who just don't like it and see potential for scammers to take advantage of people.

 I was interested in buying an account a short while ago and the person was worried I would scam others and even mentioned people he knew would give negative rep to the account once it was sold.  At this point I'm glad I've not sold or bought any accounts but atleast now I know how to best go about if I ever decide to do so.

I had two decent accounts that I sold somewhat recently after learning it is not banned on this forum.  You can get a decent amount for it, and I'd suggest doing it soon if you want to because people will pay because they get money from the sig campaigns but I wonder if the sig campaigns will be ending relatively soon.  I feel ok about it because I check the accounts periodically to make sure the people who bought them are not up to no good.  If they are, I frankly have no qualms about ratting them out.

What do you mean? People are free to leave feedback as they wish and it probably wont be removed unless the user leaving it has been spamming them. Some people feel that sold accounts are untrustworthy so they neg bomb them. Personally I wouldn't leave feedback just for the mere fact that it was sold unless they were explicitly trying to scam with it.