Hey there OG, so I thought it might be cool to talk about something that affects us all, sock accounts. What is a sock account some might ask? Well a sock account is what we call an account made by someone for the purpose of skirting the rules, deceiving people, causing discord, trolling and in some cases stealing from people.
In this day and age where folks can have multiple email addresses it is a very common practice for folks to open these accounts. While admins on a site have a variety of tools to weed out these accounts it is much more difficult with VPN’s so widely used. Now some folks create these accounts so they can come and troll members or start fights. Their main goal seems to be making others unhappy. Now it takes a pretty pathetic individual to go so far out of their way with a goal of making others unhappy but yeah, those people exist. We have likely all seen members get banned from a site for their behavior only to pop back up under a different screen name. There are also those who do things like create multiple accounts for the purpose of personal gain. For example let’s say there is a seed run going on or a large giveaway that does not require any kind of member level. These folks may try to create multiple accounts so they can take multiple kicks at the can and get more they they are supposed to thereby taking the spots of legitimate members away. Another example would be those who in our case see free seeds being offered to folks. These people will create multiple accounts just to take advantage of members generosity and by lying basically steal said offerings from other users by pretending to be multiple people.
Now the fact is that the MODs here do a great job of keeping on top of this and weed out the scammers so we are very lucky, the same can’t be said for all sites. One issue is it can be a rock and a hard place situation where they can’t get rid of a person right away due to needing concrete proof of them being deceitful. Wanting to be fair to users and not judge them to quickly is important and honorable but also has the effect of sometimes leaving sock accounts in place while they try to gather the proof the justify banning them. During that time these people can get away with scamming folks with their dishonesty and taking advantage of people. There is no good way around it really.
As long as generosity exists there will be those folks lacking morals and taking advantage of others. Its unfortunate but seems to be a fact of life. People really should be a little guarded regarding those they don’t know at least till they figure out who they are dealing with. Just a few thoughts on a pet peeve of mine. If you run across these folks do not call them out, it only creates drama. Instead convey your concerns to a moderator and let them deal with it. Public displays calling out others, while they can be satisfying in some ways, create uneasy feelings in the forum which is the opposite of what most of us want.
Ok rant over, have an amazing day OG and stay safe 
Agreed
. All kidding aside, spot on 