Chess.com Forum Flooded With New Accounts?

Recently there's been so many new accounts opened and then banned.

edit*

I thought it would be fun to list them, but as @david points out that gives the troll attention so is probably a bad idea.

@tenderballoon
I don't think new accounts should be banned. I'm glad chess.com has many new members, and I enjoy reading and responding to their topics, and having them post in my topics as well.

In what way are you being harassed?

Already banned heh.

By the way I didn't report any of those accounts (and in general I don't report accounts unless it's something extreme).

i just wondered, since he was only on site for 6 hours at the time of my post...

It was probably the same person who had these two accounts closed yesterday.

https://www.chess.com/member/ChessGirlMayumi

https://www.chess.com/member/unitycactus

He didn't like that I already knew it was him and so called my post harassment.

In general nothing that troll says is personal, it's just said for a reaction.

Yeah, I think you correctly called it in that other topic.

Chess.com sees clicks as money, so they don't care.

Well, mods might care, but not upper management. Not to the point that they'll invest resources into it.

Actually, some pretty significant resources have gone into it.  Unfortunately, internet technology means that IP bans and other tools can be circumvented.

Ok, maybe my comment is unfair. I'm aware of a few of these free tools.

But for example that 2Q guy and what he did. If I were Erik I'd be pretty unhappy. I assume there were ways to find his ISP and report him even if he was using certain tools.

Yes, chess.com would be able to take legal action against him if they considered it worth it.  His ISP would be required to reveal who he is if that were to happen.  It's not generally worth it with random trolls, but 2Q probably got closer than anyone else has.

I only used half the acronym.

Anyway, what I hadn't considered was a lot of these could be 1 use accounts on 1 use IPs, so they may never be banned.

I'm still highly suspicious of about 4 accounts listed in my OP, and I mean, @itsthefartiest is obviously the same person who was just banned, but maybe mods can't do anything about it if the user changes IPs and never logs into that account again.

I have to admit, Stiggling, when I first saw you on these forums my first thought was that you were BobbyTapalrov's new account. I quickly realized that wasn't the case but it was my first idea

Thanks I guess

This was my first account (back when the red symbol didn't mean cheating, I closed the account myself)

https://www.chess.com/member/orangehonda

Ok, so new criteria. If the accounts post a few times in their first hour of creation, but then never log on again, I'm going to consider that confirmation it's a troll (depending on how trolly their first posts are).

I can confirm that's not a fair play closure.  Until v3, there was no separate icon for self-closures or abuse closures, and the information was not stored in a convenient field to update the icons on old account closures for v3.

Maybe Honda took legal action to shut down that account...they would probably have preferred Superfruit..antioxidant  Honda ?!

We'd relaxed a little on the earlier injunction, but I thought it best not to tempt him with this latest one, and therefore re-iterated the original ban, which still applies.

I also think this thread is a bad idea, because it's giving our latest abuser exactly what he wants: a record of his "achievements" that people are looking at, and he'll probably get a kick out of accounts that aren't his being accredited to him.

I'll leave it for the next 24 hours or so, but after that I'm locking it.

Thanks,

David, moderator

Yeah, for sure the attention is something he'd want, which is why (after tenderballoons posted) I decided to block them before listing their name.

In my mind, I was hoping this would become more like that topic where people would post to help moderators catch spam... because some of this person's accounts are quickly spotted by people in the forums, and of course mods can't watch every new post and new user 24 hours a day.

And I think a strong deterrent to opening new accounts to troll is having them closed quickly. But ok, maybe this topic wasn't the way to do it. I also edited the OP.

Yeah, I'd suggest something like a neighborhood watch group (or state of the forums group) but... that's a lot of work and I'm not willing to commit to it.