[Brainstorm] Mechanism for Enforcing One Account Per Person

[Bray]

Security needs to be significantly improved on this site.
Anyone can create as many accounts as they want, and nothing is done about it.

Why would having multiple accounts be filed under "security issues"?

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

I want bother answering your TRAP question!

[Fuchur]

I'm wondering :

If there are several people in one household which all want to play the same game at the same time but need to complete their table with players from BGA, they would need to create an account for each of them, all located in the same household (and therefor sharing same WIFI, IP-address and so on).

If you think that this should be allowed there doesn't seem any reasonable way to block multi-accounting.

[Meeplelowda]

It's the Ship of Theseus paradox.

I figured this is where you were going with whether the "you" five year ago is the same you now. In fact, I had a long response to that, then decided to just edit it down to the one sentence I posted.

Also, just because because your body changes with time doesn't mean there aren't some things that remain static enough to ID you, like iris patterns, etc.

[Meeplelowda]

its a non issue outside of maybe one or two, coop games.

Using an alt to Elo boost in non-coop games is also an instance of a Sybil attack. And it's definitely not a "non-issue," as people have had their accounts either banned, or their Elo reset because of it.

[Meeplelowda]

If you think that this should be allowed there doesn't seem any reasonable way to block multi-accounting.

I think this is correct. There are ways, but none that most people would submit to. So we may have to settle for focusing on detection rather than prevention.

[Meeplelowda]

What makes me curious is:

How prevalent is this "problem" exactly? I assume it is only a problem in partnership games, because I have played a large number of games this year and I cannot recall ever feeling as though I were experiencing being cheated by a multi-accouter.

I've played a lot of spades also (Well, maybe not "a lot" in comparison to people who mainly play that game and nothing else) and I've never encountered colluding opponents.

I think you have an unstated assumption that this is only a problem for partner games. While it may be an issue there (people have complained about it in Tichu, for example), I think the far more prevalent occurrence is plain vanilla Elo boosting with alt accounts. That seems to be a perennial issue.

If banks cannot completely eliminate fraud and phishing, wouldn't we be asking a lot of a board game site to try to eliminate or prevent all forms of board game fraud? Especially when the "solution" becomes more of a problem than the original problem? (Such as the ridiculous Elo penalty for a 3rd consecutive win against the same opponent).

This is kind of the roundabout point I was making in response to the thread that spawned this spinoff where someone opined that BGA should simply wave a magic wand and implement "robust" measures to stop multi-accounting. Oh really? You think it's that simple, eh?

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

In my opinion this issue has never been taken seriously.

[FrankJones]

What makes me curious is:

How prevalent is this "problem" exactly? I assume it is only a problem in partnership games, because I have played a large number of games this year and I cannot recall ever feeling as though I were experiencing being cheated by a multi-accouter.

I've played a lot of spades also (Well, maybe not "a lot" in comparison to people who mainly play that game and nothing else) and I've never encountered colluding opponents.

I think you have an unstated assumption that this is only a problem for partner games. While it may be an issue there (people have complained about it in Tichu, for example), I think the far more prevalent occurrence is plain vanilla Elo boosting with alt accounts. That seems to be a perennial issue.

If banks cannot completely eliminate fraud and phishing, wouldn't we be asking a lot of a board game site to try to eliminate or prevent all forms of board game fraud? Especially when the "solution" becomes more of a problem than the original problem? (Such as the ridiculous Elo penalty for a 3rd consecutive win against the same opponent).

This is kind of the roundabout point I was making in response to the thread that spawned this spinoff where someone opined that BGA should simply wave a magic wand and implement "robust" measures to stop multi-accounting. Oh really? You think it's that simple, eh?

With regard to your second point - exactly; it's just not easy to do.

With regard to the first point - Let's examine this for a non-coop game, such as Azul. How exactly would this work? It would require a dummy account and a normal account (either controlled by the same person, or by two people colluding). So, the dummy account loses to the main account to dump Elo points to the main account. But unless the dummy account were highly rated, the Elo gain for the main account would quickly become insignificant, eventually approaching zero. To boost the main account to any Elo of any significance would require getting the dummy account Elo very high. A main account cannot boost itself to 500 Elo without a dummy account also having 500+ Elo. In which case... the entire process would be unnecessary.

Maybe a player is capable of achieving 500 Elo but no more. SO, this player creates two accounts, getting them both to 500, and then uses them to boost one account higher. Even without the Elo penalty in place for 3+ wins against the same player, how high could the boosted account really become? Before long, the Elo gain would be 2 and then 1 and then approach zero. And the boosted account would still not even be in the top 100. How many people would even notice or care? Actually, a 500 Elo in Azul would not even be in the top 1200. So, few people would notice or care.

If these shenanigans somehow elevated a player to an Elo or ranking of any significance, the other top players would quickly notice and report the matter, which would be conclusively decided very quickly. (Two equally ranked players would never have one player win dozens of games in a row).

Meanwhile, I (and perhaps many others) often play games in sets, offering or accepting a rematch with player order switched. Maybe one person wins both games in the set. Now, if those two players get matched up again, sometimes unintentionally, one player stands to receive an Elo penalty for winning? And without being notified at the start of the match and without being given the opportunity to decline the match? That's a solution that is worse than the problem.

So, when I win two in a row, I sometimes red-thumb the player, which is also a poor solution. When it comes to moderation penalties, there are some aspects of the process that take red thumbs into account.

In general, the top players in a game are attentive to the leaderboards and likely can do a good job catching irregularities.

[MasterMystery]

Regarding ELO boosting. The current penalty is even worse than the original problem. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 67#p224467

I have not experienced a single time an issue with multi accounting since I joined. Or nothing I was aware of. I don't feel it's a problem. Also elo is a ranking to estimate win rate and not a "ladder" style. Arena with all it's fraunds would be better ...