Should bitcointalk account trading be banned?

[Relnarien]

If a scammer wanna scam he will do it with bought accounts or without them, also i dont think that a hero member with green trust will sell his account and thats the only way to scam a bigger amount

You don't have to be a hero member with green trust to be trusted. I've seen people allegedly selling a Senior with green trust. They could surely use that account to play out a few decent, simultaneous cons.

And that's why the feedback system shouldn't be considered definitive and used just as a guide. It's not that difficult to effectively "buy" or acquire positive trust around here. It's unlikely that the person selling the account is going to be an active and valued member of the community regardless of the feedback so if you're  not familar with that user you should be cautious, and as I stated above, if you use escrow for every trade then you should be fine.

I was thinking more if the bought account with trust were to act as escrow and then con.

That is actually one of the more obvious reasons as to why the sale of accounts should not be allowed. Other reasons include giving the new account holder solid opportunities to con an acquaintance of the original account owner who was not informed of the sale, con lenders by flaunting the account's positive rating and past trading history, use the social influence garnered by the account over time in order to promote a scam, and so on and so forth. I have seen no other discussion board, website or service where the sale of accounts was even considered anything but wrong.

I understand that it would be difficult to detect the transfer of an account from one person to another. However, if a member starts an auction thread for his/her account, I believe that swift and decisive action has to be taken against the act since the evidence is readily available and redundantly archived.

[Cryptopher]

Although selling accounts isn't plausible, but nor the mods, nor the admin can stop it. You ban the IP, they use a VPN, you ban the account, they'll get a new one. It's better when it's done openly, when people know the risk they might be dealing with a sold account, rather than secretly, when the user imagines the account belongs to the original member.

Perhaps a mechanism for acknowledging sold accounts would be useful? Ideally not through leaving trust.

[gloryninja]

I doubt banning it would make much difference. Maybe regulate sold accounts so users can be noticed that the account is owned by someone else. Its hard but if we could prevent such things from happening then more security and protection for users.

[hilariousandco]

If a scammer wanna scam he will do it with bought accounts or without them, also i dont think that a hero member with green trust will sell his account and thats the only way to scam a bigger amount

You don't have to be a hero member with green trust to be trusted. I've seen people allegedly selling a Senior with green trust. They could surely use that account to play out a few decent, simultaneous cons.

And that's why the feedback system shouldn't be considered definitive and used just as a guide. It's not that difficult to effectively "buy" or acquire positive trust around here. It's unlikely that the person selling the account is going to be an active and valued member of the community regardless of the feedback so if you're  not familar with that user you should be cautious, and as I stated above, if you use escrow for every trade then you should be fine.

I was thinking more if the bought account with trust were to act as escrow and then con.

That is actually one of the more obvious reasons as to why the sale of accounts should not be allowed. Other reasons include giving the new account holder solid opportunities to con an acquaintance of the original account owner who was not informed of the sale, con lenders by flaunting the account's positive rating and past trading history, use the social influence garnered by the account over time in order to promote a scam, and so on and so forth. I have seen no other discussion board, website or service where the sale of accounts was even considered anything but wrong.

I understand that it would be difficult to detect the transfer of an account from one person to another. However, if a member starts an auction thread for his/her account, I believe that swift and decisive action has to be taken against the act since the evidence is readily available and redundantly archived.

Banning the sale of accounts won't stop this. And accounts are almost always sold from brand new newbie accounts to save them from being tarnished and negbombed. Most accounts are left negative feedback if they're found out to be sold or are trying to sell an account.

Although selling accounts isn't plausible, but nor the mods, nor the admin can stop it. You ban the IP, they use a VPN, you ban the account, they'll get a new one. It's better when it's done openly, when people know the risk they might be dealing with a sold account, rather than secretly, when the user imagines the account belongs to the original member.

Perhaps a mechanism for acknowledging sold accounts would be useful? Ideally not through leaving trust.

What sort of mechanism and how would that work exactly? Most deals go on behind closed doors so it's impossible to know.

[haploid23]

If you guys haven't already noticed, a lot of sour things happen on this forum that shouldn't be allowed. I've been here long enough to see how this forum as evolved since the earlier days. For example, before there was the whole trust system, there was the scammer tags. The worst that happened to a known scammer, was just a tag. They are not banned, and mods do absolutely nothing about it.

So with that being said, if scammers are allowed to roam freely here, what makes you think mods will spend the time to chase accounts that were possibly traded? And if the accounts were traded to use as a scam, it's not like the scammer would be banned anyways. If a scammer isn't banned after he committed the scam, why would he be banned before a possible scam from the account trade? I'm not saying I support account trading (actually heavily against it), but just don't see this ever being enforced.

Btw, I haven't seen a single thread for the sales of a forum account. Maybe I'm not in the right areas. Link to a few examples?

[harlenadler]

If you guys haven't already noticed, a lot of sour things happen on this forum that shouldn't be allowed. I've been here long enough to see how this forum as evolved since the earlier days. For example, before there was the whole trust system, there was the scammer tags. The worst that happened to a known scammer, was just a tag. They are not banned, and mods do absolutely nothing about it.

So with that being said, if scammers are allowed to roam freely here, what makes you think mods will spend the time to chase accounts that were possibly traded? And if the accounts were traded to use as a scam, it's not like the scammer would be banned anyways. If a scammer isn't banned after he committed the scam, why would he be banned before a possible scam from the account trade? I'm not saying I support account trading (actually heavily against it), but just don't see this ever being enforced.

Btw, I haven't seen a single thread for the sales of a forum account. Maybe I'm not in the right areas. Link to a few examples?

I agree. No way this would ever be enforced on bitcointalk. Caveat emptor is the name of the game here. (And if you don't know, now ya know )

The digital goods forum has some threads where accounts are being bought and sold: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=93.0

[hilariousandco]

Btw, I haven't seen a single thread for the sales of a forum account. Maybe I'm not in the right areas. Link to a few examples?

They pop up almost daily in the Digital Goods section. There's quite an in demand market for them since the signature restrictions came into place. There's actually a couple of users who even act as account brokers buying and selling 'em on.

Subud seems to be the most popular and longest running buyer/seller: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292662.0

[Mobius7]

The digital goods forum has some threads where accounts are being bought and sold: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=93.0

Holy crap, there are already 4 threads selling bitcointalk accounts in just the first page.
It seems quite a number of accounts are being traded.

[Gimmelfarb]

Btw, I haven't seen a single thread for the sales of a forum account. Maybe I'm not in the right areas. Link to a few examples?

They pop up almost daily in the Digital Goods section. There's quite an in demand market for them since the signature restrictions came into place. There's actually a couple of users who even act as account brokers buying and selling 'em on.

Subud seems to be the most popular and longest running buyer/seller: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=292662.0

i believe Subud! was recently banned (not for trading accounts AFAIK). i heard it had something to do with bumping his marketplace thread, then deleting the bump posts once someone commented on the thread.

Holy crap, there are already 4 threads selling bitcointalk accounts in just the first page.
It seems quite a number of accounts are being traded.

it isn't clear from looking what kind of volume there actually is here, though. it may not add up to much.

[Shallow]

How do you effectively stop it though? Short answer, you pretty much can't 

[jambola2]

Although selling accounts isn't plausible, but nor the mods, nor the admin can stop it. You ban the IP, they use a VPN, you ban the account, they'll get a new one. It's better when it's done openly, when people know the risk they might be dealing with a sold account, rather than secretly, when the user imagines the account belongs to the original member.

That makes sense.

If you had some hypothetical method which made it possible for you to perfectly ban people who traded accounts , with no gaps , do you think it would be used ?

Not focusing on the means and problems arising , if we could stop this account trading , should we or should we allow it ?

[mprep]

Although selling accounts isn't plausible, but nor the mods, nor the admin can stop it. You ban the IP, they use a VPN, you ban the account, they'll get a new one. It's better when it's done openly, when people know the risk they might be dealing with a sold account, rather than secretly, when the user imagines the account belongs to the original member.

That makes sense.

If you had some hypothetical method which made it possible for you to perfectly ban people who traded accounts , with no gaps , do you think it would be used ?

Not focusing on the means and problems arising , if we could stop this account trading , should we or should we allow it ?

Probably yes. There are some forum rules (account trading, multiple accounts) that allow something because it isn't possible to control it or police it enough to actually severely decrease the activity in such.

[acs267]

I dislike it, but even if you ban it, it's really not stopping somebody from having multiple accounts to scam with.

[crunck]

Most of the bought account are used in signature offers and like IMO, also if it's banned officially people would buy/sell them on reddit or any place bitcoin related.

[Trading]

Of course, allowing it makes selling accounts much easier. Selling them outside the forum would limit the number of accounts sold.

But in doubt the rule should be freedom, not prohibition.

[ShameOnYou]

My feeling is that this is mostly an outgrowth of the signature campaigns, with them being fairly lucrative. It's a bit shady, but I think accounts sold are most likely to be used for this (somewhat) legitimate purpose -- as opposed to scamming.

[harlenadler]

Seems it's a pretty close vote right now. 56.7% support a ban and 43.3% do not support one. Even if most support a ban, I simply don't understand how it could be reasonably enforced. Enforcement against scammers themselves has always been lax on this forum, so it would seem quite strange to prohibit a market that simply has potential for scamming.

[Cryptopher]

Okay so even if the majority that have voted think that they should be banned we have no way to enforce it. I guess once more it means that it is all about users educating themselves and employing common sense when it comes to trading - which should be the case irrespective of selling accounts.

[CEG5952]

Okay so even if the majority that have voted think that they should be banned we have no way to enforce it. I guess once more it means that it is all about users educating themselves and employing common sense when it comes to trading - which should be the case irrespective of selling accounts.

That's just how it's *always* been on bitcointalk. There are always scammers abound here. In a place where scammers used to just get a "scammer" tag instead of being banned (and now we just have the trust system), that should come as no surprise. I'm also not at all surprised that people sell accounts, given these signature campaigns.

[acs267]

Okay so even if the majority that have voted think that they should be banned we have no way to enforce it. I guess once more it means that it is all about users educating themselves and employing common sense when it comes to trading - which should be the case irrespective of selling accounts.

That's just how it's *always* been on bitcointalk. There are always scammers abound here. In a place where scammers used to just get a "scammer" tag instead of being banned (and now we just have the trust system), that should come as no surprise. I'm also not at all surprised that people sell accounts, given these signature campaigns.

Agreeing. Sketchy things have always been going on on BitcoinTalk, but in the more recent years, only legal sketchy things. Even if the accounts are banned - they could just use TOR or a VPN, and sell them through other sites or via P.M.