For years I've noticed that a common theme among account farmers is to use their bounty/campaign earnings to buy aged accounts.
How to do this? Here's my main criteria:
- Long posting gap (1 or more years)
- Noticeable change in writing style
- Quickly joins sig campaign or bounty
- Change in posting habits (places, frequency, etc.)
- No cryptographic proof owner is the original
You've made a good list of criteria to possibly spot an account that has changed hand, because if we should only use thing to spot them out wouldn't have been enough, let say
"the posting gap"Someone may leave the forum for one or more than a year due to obvious reasons and come back after some years but still the original owner, therefore, combining a of things such as you have listed makes brain. Another way to possibly spot them out is posting pattern, basically the local board and other discussion board will/may change differently from where the original owner usually post.