Multi-Accounting: is your business at risk?

Multi-Accounting: is your business at risk?
Image by Kateryna Fedoruk @the_humble_elf

Multi-accounting is a number of accounts on one site (a social network, a special online service, and so on) that are managed by one person. It is used in completely different areas — for working with social networks, online shops, bets, and token sales. Users create dozens of accounts and, accordingly, earn ten times more.

Multi-accounting is prohibited on almost all websites and you can get banned for violating this rule. If you're lucky, only one profile is left, regardless of their quantity, and all bonuses that you received due to circumvention of the rules will be written off. In the worst case, all accounts will simply be banned, and the balances will be reset to zero.

Social Networks

In the situation with social networks, multi-accounting opens up great opportunities for promotion. Moreover, it involves both the accounts themselves and the goods or services that you advertise.

For example, all social networks limit the number of actions per account per day. Some of them allow you to send only 40 invitations to a group, 50 to friends, 100 messages to a group, etc. Accordingly, by increasing the number of accounts, we also increase the limit, which means, in fact, the effectiveness of the entire promotion. Let's look at the main areas of business, in which multi-accounts can occur and which are at risk.

Online Games

Multi-accounting is an additional player profile in multiplayer games, usually used for financial, combat, or other support of the main account. This approach is typical for gamers who want to use additional heroes/functionality. Such characters are often used for simpler actions when there is no need to use the main character. It can also be used for diplomatic actions, misleading other players, espionage, intelligence, hooliganism, etc.

Multi-accounting is one of the reasons for the departure of "honest" players from games. A player who has many profiles gets game advantages. For example, in-browser games, additional troops are built on several accounts, which can be used for defense, enemy reconnaissance, as well as espionage in favor of the owner of the primary account. That is why in most online games, such actions are prohibited, and if multi-accounting is detected, administrators can take action to block all related accounts or by IP address.

Multiboxing

Multiboxing is the use of two or more computers to simultaneously control your characters. To do this you need to buy a copy of the game and an account for each of the computers if it is paid. This is also a kind of multi-accounting, which, at the same time, is harder to track and can function for a long time.

Bookmakers

Multi-accounting in a bookmaker's office implies playing on two or more accounts simultaneously by one user. Keen players practice buying or renting accounts of other users. Bets are placed from different devices and in some cases even by different people. However, the bets on these profiles are duplicated. In rare cases, the office can make claims to those accounts, but nevertheless, it sometimes happens.

Such actions are suppressed by the office. The account may be closed for verification by the security service of the office. There are many problems that business owners themselves face: multi-accounts are hard to track, and owners of many profiles earn money, reducing the profitability of the businesses.

Users opt for many ways to register multiple accounts (different IP, VPN, special equipment, etc.). It is getting harder to track them independently every day in spite of the fact that modern equipment, including laptops, computers, routers, etc., are marked with digital identification.

Business owners have to collect information at the registration stage and analyze it, also tracking account activity. The information is stored in the archives of the resource. The bookmaker's security service uses the data to reveal additional accounts. In some bookmakers, a special bot-type program is sometimes launched, the work of which is aimed at finding matches.

The following main reasons for blocking can be identified:

  • the same IP address or the same identification parameters of the equipment from which the player logs into different accounts;
  • the same payment details when replenishing the gaming account or withdrawing winnings from different accounts;
  • the betting style is approximately the same:

1) coincidences in bets, odds, and playing on the same markets;

2) the time at which bets are usually made.

There are dangers for players using multi-accounting and for those people who provide their data or a ready-made gaming account to another person. However, the business faces the biggest risks. Businessmen are forced to spend money on special equipment and software for tracking multi-booking. If this is not done, the risk of loss of profit increases.

Сompanies engaged in information security, such as KYCAID, can help in solving problems with multi-accounting, regardless of the field of activity. For this purpose, individual solutions, and modern software are used, and all requirements are taken into account, including local normative acts. Multi-accounting is a gross violation of the rules in most cases. With the help of technological methods, fraudsters are easily detected even in the case of sophisticated disguises.

Fair play is the only way to avoid blocking. However, users are willing to do a lot for the sake of earning money, so business owners have to improve and constantly monitor accounts in order to timely identify and prevent the appearance of new "dubs".