Account selling needs to be banned period, for both Bitcointalk and external accounts like facebook, twitter, etc. Selling accounts facilitates fraud by giving someone trust and veteran status without earning it, so a scammer who should have extreme negative rep ends up with a nice looking profile. This fools people into sending first to them when trading if they don't know any better.
So if we banned account sales you would then feel more confident in sending money to scammers? This is exactly one of the reasons why it's allowed as if it was banned it wouldn't change anything apart from give users a false sense of security. People would just sell accounts off site and out of sight.
I've personally dealt with at least a couple people who clearly bought an account to scam traders, common signs are no posts in months and demanding you send first, turning down all other options like escrow even if their trust from months ago indicates they were a reasonable trader.
If it's easy to tell which accounts were sold then it shouldn't be a big issue. People need to make their own minds up about users and 9/10 should be using escrow anyway. Accounts can always be hacked so you should be aware of that too.
Trust can also be directly manipulated via using accounts you bought to give trust to other accounts you own.
You could just create your own army of alts for this, no need to buy one. Should we ban alts now?
Scammers want a fast track to getting people to send first since they'd never build up legit rep on their own, which is why they spend 1+ BTC for accounts. They know they can spend 1 BTC and maybe get 10 BTC from scams.
I think you're exaggerating here. I'm not denying that sometimes people do buy them in an attempt to scam but but most are busted before they even get a chance to. I haven't seen a bought account scam anywhere near that amount and usually they end up trying to scam and getting neg-bombed before they have the chance forever ruining their account and wasting their money in in the process.
Also scammers will use their accounts to damage a legitimate traders reputation in an attempt to take their customers. Segvec did that to me.
How do you know they were bought? He could just have used his own alts or urged or paid others to leave negative.
Regarding external accounts like facebook, these also help scammers gain fake rep, by making a fake identity look like an actual person. Once I tried auctioning gold in the marketplace, and the biggest offer was from a senior member with some positive rep. They talked to me via facebook, the facebook was the hottest british girl ever which is a tactic to distract. It actually fooled me and seemed legit, until the person refused localbitcoins escrow and forum escrow for irrational reasons, demanding we use escrow.com which they would fund with a wire transfer even though the auction was clearly for bitcoins. Ends up they could fund with a credit card, and easily reverse payment out of escrow regardless.
Sounds like it doesn't take much to fool you. Being a "woman" should set off red flags instantly.
Clearly both the bitcointalk and facebook accounts were bought, and it almost lost me thousands of dollars, and ruined the auction. A few days later someone got scammed by the same person for a lot of money.
How were they clearly bought? Anyone could create both a bitcointalk account and Facebook account pretending to be a girl free of charge. If people are naive enough to send money just because they're a woman then there's not much anyone can do for them nor is it the staff's job to babysit them.
Bitcointalk is somewhat grey area since it allows a relatively free market, but clearly Bitcointalk doesn't support criminals, so why should fraudsters be able to openly trade accounts? The trading of accounts needs to be banned ASAP, and any indications you bought or sold an account should lead to all associated accounts being terminated. The marketplaces on Bitcointalk would be safer and probably a lot more active if there was a crackdown on all sold accounts, almost all sold accounts are used by scammers.
For the same reason scams and scammers aren't moderated: Almost impossible to police and incredibly time consuming for staff to check for these things, not to mention we can get it wrong. What if we accidentally thought you were the scammer and banned you? Fair game? Nope. It's easier to allow them and let users police and defend themselves as they should be able to do. As much as you dislike the practice banning accounts sales will do absolutely nothing but push them off site.
The most benign use of a sold account is getting into a signature campaign you're not qualified for. This defrauds the advertisers, since they end up with an unknowledgable scammer making as much posts as possible, rather than the knowledgeable veteran member they are paying for.
It's not defrauding anyone. They're paying for an advert in a signature and that's what they get.
I'm not calling out anyone in particular, I understand that even honest people could end up selling accounts for profit since they don't realize that the accounts are used maliciously and end up damaging honest traders. This is why new policies need to be enforced to educate thm.
Then why punish everybody including legit people who are just trying to make some extra money from accounts, especially when we can't even enforce it adequately?
To some up, it's time to remove this cancer from Bitcointalk, no more account trading and banning all accounts which appear to be sold. Bitcointalk's currency exchange and market places are very weak right now due to scammers outnumbering honest traders. Almost every newbie gets scammed and most end up avoiding Bitcointalk. Legitimate and reputable traders are constantly being attacked by scammers from all angles, which has ruined even the most successful traders. LouReed is an example, I think he was quite honest but ended up losing so much money to moneypak/paypal/cash deposit scammers he became insolvent, I recall him telling me about losing thousands of dollars numerous times in like a month or 2. There are barely any legitimate traders left. Every time I bump my selling thread I get at least a few inquiries from people who are probably trying to scam me, it's a waste of time so I rarely advertise on Bitcointalk anymore.
I think you're exaggerating the numbers again, but people really need to learn to protect themselves better as harsh as it may sound. The only person who can protect you from being scammed is yourself and sadly sometimes it takes getting burned once or twice before they learn, but most people can handle themselves and if not they certainly need to learn because one thing I know is scammers will never go away and will always be looking for new ways to outsmart you and steal your money. Your solution and logic for this is like trying to put a bandage over a cancer. We can't see it so the cancer is now gone and cured? No, it's still there, just out of sight.
