This topic is brought up way too often and the conclusion is that admins/mods can't stop the black market trade of these accounts.
even if the mods could make the sale of an account extremely difficult. That would just hike up the price of the accounts and make them far more sought after.
why do you think prices would go up?
As it stands now, most sold accounts are used for non-scamming purposes, and if the sale of accounts were disallowed then the buyers who buy accounts for non-scamming purposes would no longer wish to buy accounts, but the number of accounts for sale would remain the same. Basic economics would imply that the price would go down, reducing the costs to potential scammers
If the forum just bans account sales, there will be less people who will go ahead and buy an account. There will be less people trying to sell accounts openly. Less accounts going as collateral for loans. Less spam. Less scams.
That is, the entire market for account sales will shrink (demand and supply, though I can't say which will be more or less).
The only problem I see with that is, as you pointed out there will still be trades going on outside the forum which will be risky (very probable that an escrow will not be used and much more likely to be scammed).
Well the only reason why accounts are being bought and sold are, directly or indirectly, to make useless posts for a campaign or to scam. So why not?
Suggestion: Ban account sales from 10th June to 10th August and see how it goes?
Couldn't have said it better myself. The bottom line for me is that both parties in an account sale cannot be trusted, much like the people who come on this forum to offer prescription medications for sale cannot be trusted.
I'm on the receiving end of a lot of butthurt because of my negative trust that I'm leaving lately. Well, that's our trust system. You can scream bloody murder until your uvula explodes, but I'm not deleting any of it.