Not aimed at you, crazyearner, so please don't take offense, just a general question to everyone who accepts signed messages as proof of original owner:
There's a couple of bucks in that addy, total. If I was selling an account, why wouldn't I sweeten the deal, at no cost to me, by including it, private key and all, in the deal?
Am I missing something obvious?
Again, not implying the crazyearner account is sold, just a general question.
A lot of the time owners of accounts still use the addresses and tied into other things or payments from sites, business and get kept back as being retained. Most will keep and hold back old account wallets because posts can simply be deleted and all traces of what has been posted over a number of years and covered up over time to make it look as tho it was never sold. With signing a message I understand shows ownership of 1 the account on here if signing with exact words in it 2 ownership of account so it is the same PC etc and same person doing the message.
If you where to try using a custom message to sign on a different address that is not in your wallet you cant confirm it. You will get error message saying private key for the entered address is not available.
So that way if it is the user who has access to it can confirm it also has access to account and can confirm ownership of both. That is to my understanding at lest as am still learning on this area.