I want to preface this post by saying that I think it's wrong to send merit to your own alt account. We can't merit our own posts (I think, I've never tried) so we shouldn't be meriting our own posts regardless of how many accounts we use to make posts.
But, is this really merit abuse? I haven't spent any time digging into the post that was sent 2 merits (it's been deleted and I don't have the time right now,) but I found something interesting about
this post that was sent one merit:
Two days after philipma1957 made that post using his alt account, someone made a post questioning whether that was really philipma1957 or a scammer:
~
Are you seriously using a different account for your cell phone or are you a scammer?
If the former, WTF.
In the matter of 1 minute and 50 seconds philipma1957 sent 4 merits in that thread, one each to 4 posts, as you can see here:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ibb.co%2F2ysM7tD%2Fimage.png&t=665&c=ezY4V0YyDpRY0A)
And this post in the same thread confirms what I originally suspected:
basically the cellphone is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I drive around
and the laptop is used to prevent a crowbar attack when I go to the farm in Clifton
I just gave the cellphone account a merit to confirm it is me.
Again, I'm not condoning this as a way to confirm your alts, but it seems rather obvious that is what philipma1957 meant to do. It also seems rather obvious that philipma1957 is not trying to game the system. Abuse of the merit system doesn't seem to be happing here. Misuse maybe, but that can easily be solved by educating philipma1957 that this use of the merit system is frowned upon.
I saw a lot of drama in this forum regarding meriting alt accounts.
And you decided to make some more!
Maybe he's legitimately curious if it's safe to use his previous account to merit his newbie account...
![Cheesy](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
If the thread and post exists once upon a time merit system was started and I asked theymos if meriting an alt was possible and if possible was permitted.
The answer was yes. IIRC
As for why there are multiple alt accounts. I lost access to more than 2 or 3 of them.
Now maybe the rules changed and no-one is allowed 2 accounts.
But if that is true this thread should be deleted as it is obvious the op is an alt.
philipma1957 DT1
Philipma1957cellphone DT2 lost access when my cell phone was ported away from me. I have zero problem ending this but I have no access to end it.
Philipma1957onvacation lost access years ago don't know what email created it. I have zero problem ending this but have no access to end it.
philipma1957laptop I had to create this when on the road and needed to talk on bitcointalk I will keep this.
I just formed a company with buysolar (forum member) and wanted an official 'business' bitcointalk account to match it.
I am transparent and in rules have changed from when merit was first started fine. I have zero issues with rule changes.
I will sign on with what is to become my main account. a1 Hashrate LLC2022