Suspicious Accounts on Chess.com

Dear Chess.com Community

Has everyone noticed that there are a lot of newly created account holders with suspicious activity on Chess.com?

In my experience, most of the suspicious games played were against opponents who have 1 month or less experience.  However, Chess.com doesn't provide us with the ability to filter out recently created account creators, many of whom are multiple account generators.  A simple feature such as being able to filter out recently created accounts would improve Chess.com and our chess community experience immensely.

The reason for this need is that Chess.com puts you into Chess purgatory for turning down matches against opponents.  However, if there are many of the recently created accounts with suspicious activity that fall within your selected range of opponents, then you will be matched with those types of accounts.  

Many of such suspicious accounts usually reach the 2100 to 2200 range or even 2300 range before getting removed or seeing such accounts put into inactive status by the user.  

As a chess community, I believe that we need to call on the Moderators to look into creating a simple filter to enable long time players to filter out newly created accounts with 1 month or less of experience.  

It would cut down on much of the suspicious activity and discourage the creation of multiple suspicious accounts on Chess.com.  

Anyone else feel the same way about this issue?

Yes, I think this would be a great idea. Not just for cheaters, but also for returning trolls who create new accounts after getting banned.

I don't think that its so much of a problem for players who are banned for other reasons than suspicious activity because it doesn't affect the legitimacy of Chess.com as a competitive online chess site.  

When ratings are involved, having suspicious activity that affects the overall ratings of players discourages the real players from wanting to continue their presence on the site.  Meaning that the suspicious activity could have a harmful effect on the site as a whole and tarnish its reputation.  

Those who troll the boards or forums should be suspended for a while for their comments, but at the end of the day, their comments don't really harm the game play or ratings system in place.  Attention should be focused on cutting down on suspicious activity in Live Chess as that is where the most harm can occur when it comes to suspicious account activity.  

Absolutely. From what I understand, Chess.com has a great engine use detector, but it baffles me how something as elementary as a filter like that could be forgotten. I know though that they have auto-bans for blatantly obvious cheating.

I don't want to raise the issue of "cheating" because it is frowned upon as a topic, but I feel like we need to discuss it as suspicious account activity is becoming a serious issue.

We need to be able to filter out bad opponents instead of having to hope that they get caught eventually... I have friends who send me screen shots of having played multiple "Fair Play" violators in a day for consecutive days of online play.  That's a problem.  

@The_Krieg: If this happens to get locked, I recommend creating a thread about this issue in the Cheating Forum.

https://www.chess.com/club/cheating-forum

Grow up...  Quit being so immature.  

I just had to play a match against a suspicious account which I wanted to avoid, but sure enough... I had to play him because I would have to resign otherwise because I've been placed into Chess.com Purgatory by one of the Moderators.  

It has happened before.  I have not turned down multiple matches in a row.

My suspicious account opponent who I subsequently had to report for abusive language was cursing and saying derogatory things throughout our match to distract.  It's really frustrating to expect such behavior and then have to play such suspicious account holders or face getting rating points deducted.  

I hope that Chess.com looks into the situation.  Both from the Moderator abuse of authority issue as well as the problem with suspicious accounts.  We need to be able to filter out these opponents who have recently created accounts who have no fear of being banned because they simply create new accounts and keep breaking the rules.  It's really becoming a major issue.  If left unaddressed then the site will lose good players and be left with those losers.  

I never recall anything about moderators abusing their authorities. Can you give me an example?

You do know that this topic isn't all about cheating, do you? This is also about trolls coming back with multiple accounts. 

In response to reporting suspicious activity, my account was placed into Chess Purgatory where you could only Resign instead of aborting the match.  Most recently, the Abort option was made available but when you click on it you Resign anyway.  Chess Purgatory takes longer for matches to be made between players as they consider you a Rule Breaker (which is ironic given that I'm trying to avoid having to play suspicious accounts who may be breaking the Rules).

Happened literally right after the Report of a suspicious account was submitted.  Another time, the same thing happened when I posted a Forum topic regarding Cheating on the forums.  The forum topic was locked, I received a personal message about the seriousness of cheating and was put into Chess Purgatory.  

Excuse me, but can you tell me one mod who has abused his or her privileges?

This thread topic IS NOT ABOUT CHEATING.

It's about suspicious accounts which is very different from Cheating.  Cheating is the use of Computer Programs or Bots to gain an unfair advantage during matches.  

Suspicious accounts are essentially "Burner Accounts" where individuals or groups create multiple accounts to harass other members or to do things that violate the rules of fair play during matches.  

You will see that many times, if an opponent is swearing at you with curse words, or abusing you verbally during matches, that individual's account will have been created in the past 24-48 hours or will have had no activity for a year or two and sudden pop back up out of nowhere and start playing 100 games in a single day trolling the whole day.  They don't care because it is a Burner Account. Create get banned and create another one... all with the objective of being a problem.  

Meanwhile, the legitimate members of chess.com who have been on the site for multiple years and who are interested in creating a good chess environment suffer.   

I realize that this thread topic may get ignored and Chess.com may never create a filter in the customized matches to filter out accounts with less than 1 month experience to avoid Burner Account or Suspicious Accounts, but it is a topic that we should discuss as a community so that we can address it. 

Take a look around... the only people who care about the site are those who comment on the forums with constructive comments and suggestions of how to improve it and make it better for the players.  The real players.  Ridding the suspicious activity and cracking down on bad behavior.   

Whoever is placing members into Chess Purgatory for reporting Suspicious Activity during Live Chess or posting forum topics addressing suspicious activity.  

Moderators don't place players into the poor sportsmanship pool, it is automatic and is based on the number of aborted games as a percentage of successfully completed games; it isn't based on how many times in you abort in a row exactly.

https://support.chess.com/article/627-sportsmanship-policy

Why not just disable chat? Then at least you don't have to deal with abuse.

I have very thick skin.  I'm not bothered so much by abusive language being used during matches.  I'm concerned for other members and that is the reason why I reported it.  Most of the time, it isn't too bad the normal unsportsmanlike comment by an opponent, but my opponent was saying some pretty offensive things.

I didn't abort games prior to being in Chess Purgatory and getting docked -7 rating points for aborting a game against an account that had just been created within the last 24 hours and raised its rating from 1300 level to 2200 level in that 24 hour period.  

In fact, the option to abort was there, and I was still docked -7 and it said I resigned for abandoning the game even though I had not made a single move.  That was right after I submitted the inquiry regarding the unsportsmanlike behavior of a prior opponent.  

Can't say for sure if you went over the limit at the time, but disconnect rate is the deciding factor in that.

If you really feel you didn't/don't have a higher disconnect rate, you could always ask support to look.

https://support.chess.com/article/346-contact-us

The main takeaway is that moderators don't influence that.

Dear Chess.com Community, 

We should all get together and request that Chess.com create a Filter in Live Chess to provide the option to filter out accounts that have only been created within the past 24-48 hours or even up to 30 days from the date of creation.

The reason is that there is so much suspicious activity being done by the newly created account holders because they don't have any fear of consequence.  Such suspicious accounts are essentially burner accounts that they cycle through.  

It is one of the most frustrating things about Live Chess now... you will notice that there are opponents who create accounts the same day or within the last 48 hours and within a day or so, their accounts get closed or the account goes inactive by user.  The suspicious activity of such accounts only harms our chess community because violations of Rules by such accounts have no consequence because the suspicious account holders simply create replacement burner accounts.  

In the alternative, Chess.com should impose a 1-month probationary period for all newly created accounts.  That will discourage what is currently happening in Live Chess where the majority of suspicious activity is being done by those newly created accounts with less than one month's experience.