How AS checking multi-accounts

Hi,

Perhaps someone knows how AS checking multi-accounts, there are so many short-time lived account which just create and reset in a few seconds. I don't understand why this happen so often. 





One possible reason is someone is using this trick to hire pilots instead of training them. So basically anyone can create another accounts and train a lot of pilots one needs, then reset this account, the pilots will be immediately back to market. Then he/she can hire them instead of spending money to train pilots.





So I am wondering how AS is checking this/prevent this happen? AS has claimed one holding per account, but if someone create another account, any checking for that before another account created? Like a warning said you have created a account and cannot create one more?





I know technically it is hard to prevent this. But on the other hand, how do you solve this if you have found someone has multi-accounts? Just let him/her close the newly created account? That will be an endless game, he/she could easily create a new account somewhere else.





If it is hard to detect this, then please punish heavily when you found someone using multi-account. You can close his/her more valuable account instead of the newly created dummy one.





Just a question and a suggestion, ignore this if you think this will hurt the user too much by doing so.

It’s very hard as you include in your post. I’d suggest IP history detection is the method used (I could be wrong). If it were me, I’d have a system which looks at:

  1. Matching words or phrases in e-mail addresses

  2. Matching domain names in e-mail addresses if not one of the major mail ones e.g. gmail.com or yahoo.com

  3. Logon IP address history

  4. Browser utilization - someone like me who uses Opera and swears by Opera as a solid browser both on my PC and on tablets like my iPad, I actually could face an issue. When browsing on Opera on my iPad, my IP address is ALWAYS an Icelandic Opera AS IP address, so I could become incorrectly punished.

  5. Social status - it is very easy using free websites (and paid ones) to check a persons existence using their e-mail address. By entering their e-mail address you can find news articles about them if they exist, you can find if they’re attached to any of 100’s of social sites e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. To me, if someone is using e.g. a gmail address but doesn’t have a social standing, then I’d look at their account more thoroughly because it’s becoming more and more rare.

I say that as someone who has been involved with online fraud detection in the past - these are metrics we would use and I suppose can be easily implemented in to this environment of ‘multi-user’ also :)

Cool, you supplied so many methods to check multi-accounts. Most of them are checking email address, but it actually does not work. As you know, this game never check the email before you can play the game. So one can easily use any email address which has social status/main domain. A very simple example is he could use his friend’s email address to register for this game and play. Then basically all your supplied checking on email will fail.

I suggested to do email checking on suggestion board, but it seems AS is reluctant to add this as it ‘may’ raise the difficulty to play this game. But I cannot image anyone does not know he should click the verify link in the email to activate his account. at least almost all kinds of register system do this.

[edit]

Again: What would keep a person from clicking the verify link in his friend’s email account? He wouldn’t event have to do it himself. As such, there’s not benefit to security and only an additional (annoying) step for new players.

Hi,

it is almost impossible to stop people from creating several accounts. Checking IP addresses used to be a good and easy way to discover cheaters. But my ISP gives my two computers a different IP address. And if you have internet access through your mobile phone, your IP address will also be different from your computer’s IP address. And playing private detective by googling or checking social sites takes time and proves nothing.

I would not be surprised if people create a second account to bend the rules. But…

  1. Free trial accounts are limited in time, and in the actions they can perform.

  2. The AS-team punishes actions that are against the rules, whether the culprit has a unique account or a several accounts.

It is possible that people can really cheat with a second account, but hiring pilots is not the best example. Training 8 pilots costs less than 1% of the starting capital of a new airline. And if you can afford to lease 10 planes, you can afford to train 80 pilots :wink:

Jan

I have to agree that training pilots is a minor additional cost to an airline, bigger multiple account problems are using them to participate in IPOs, although this has largely been addressed through new IPO rules, ordering rare aircraft types/ aircraft with a long construction time, or the very simple interlining/ providing handling between two enterprises from the same user. Personally I think the best way to stop this kind of cheating is player vigilance, if you see something suspicious, report it and the team will no doubt do the rest.