Multi Accounting

What Is Multi Accounting and What Is It for?

Creating and managing numerous accounts on the same website is known as multi-accounting, which is also sometimes referred to as having many accounts. Multi-accounting is still used today even though it is typically prohibited or heavily restricted in terms of the number of accounts. It is simply necessary for advertising and wagering, and it has the potential to dramatically raise corporate revenue. Today’s topic of conversation will be that.

Multi Accounting methods

Methods of Managing Multiple Accounts: From Basic to Advanced Techniques

Creating Multiple Accounts with the Same IP and Device: By simply using a new email address, one can create multiple accounts from the same IP address and device. This is the most basic method of managing multiple accounts. For those seeking more security and anonymity, using a VPN can be an advanced technique.
Utilizing Alternative Identities for Professional Needs: This is a more sophisticated approach, often used by professionals who need to create new accounts after being restricted or banned by service providers. The method involves creating accounts in the names of friends and family or using virtual technology like emulators and unique IP addresses.
Employing Fake or Forged Identities: The most complex method involves the use of stolen data, counterfeit identities, or IDs created from authentic documents. Skilled individuals can manipulate identification systems to create new accounts, appearing as genuine customers.

These diverse methods cater to different needs and skill levels, ranging from simple solutions for casual users to advanced strategies for professional or fraudulent activities. Understanding these techniques is essential for those managing multiple accounts or combating fraudulent account creation

Why do you need multi-accounting

The creation of multiple accounts presents various challenges depending on the platform or service targeted. Whether it’s exploiting promotions, circumventing restrictions, or manipulating ratings, multi-accounting is an issue that needs attention from businesses, regulators, and users alike. Understanding these aspects can help in formulating strategies to combat this growing concern.

Promotion Abuse in Online Shopping: Many customers conduct multi-accounting to abuse discounts, sign-up offers, and other bonuses. This manipulation of business promotions is a widespread problem that affects revenue.
Affiliate Fraud in Referral Programs: This involves creating multiple accounts to collect both affiliate and initial signup bonuses. Users do this without actually increasing the customer base of a service, leading to concerns in the industry.
Circumventing Limits, Bans, and Blocklists: A common reason for multi-accounting, this practice allows those with bad credit histories, driving records, or gambling bans to continue using specific services. It also affects peer-to-peer services like online marketplaces.
Fake Customer Reviews and Their Impact: By using multiple accounts, users can write numerous false reviews. This malpractice affects the integrity of online ratings, undermining customer trust and influencing purchasing decisions.
Smurfing Among Gamers: High-level gamers create new accounts to play against lower-ranked players in this phenomenon known as smurfing. This tactic allows skilled players to gain points or hone strategies without risking their main account, leading to issues with matchmaking balance.
Resetting Bans or Negative History: Individuals who have faced restrictions or have a negative history on a site can effortlessly create a new account with a different identity. This is applicable to various scenarios, including poor credit records or issues with rented vehicles.

The main uses of multi-accounting

‒ Bypassing Restrictions: Utilizing multiple accounts can significantly extend limitations commonly associated with single account usage, such as deposit and withdrawal restrictions.

‒ International Business Management: With globalization on the rise, it is crucial to divide your operations across various countries, and multi-accounting provides a convenient tool to do so.

‒ Access to Exclusive Offers and Bonuses: Multi-accounting allows you to take advantage of exclusive bonuses and special offers that may be limited to only a certain number of users.

In which cases can mult-accounting be used effectively?

Crypto Industry

In the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, participants can engage in activities like whitelisting, airdrops, tokens, and presales, often restricted to a certain number of users. Platforms such as Coinlist allow investment using multiple accounts, demonstrating the vast opportunities in this burgeoning field.

Gaming and Online Gambling

The Gaming or iGaming industry refers to multi-accounting as smurfing, a method for players to hone skills without affecting their primary account’s statistics. The Online Gambling sector faces challenges like:

Affiliate Fraud: Creation of fake accounts to enhance CPAs (cost per acquisition) and CPLs (cost per lead).
Arbitrage: Tactics like creating multiple accounts for gaining advantages.
Matched Betting: Utilizing multiple accounts to influence odds.

Advertising on Social Networks

For advertisers and arbitrageurs handling large volumes, social networks are crucial. Having multiple accounts enables a more extensive advertising budget and provides flexibility in managing comments and segregating accounts to prevent simultaneous banning.

Ecommerce

The eCommerce sector confronts issues related to multi-account payment fraud and promo abuse. Fraudsters use multiple accounts to conduct activities like chargebacks and spreading spam discount codes or offers on a massive scale.

Loan Providers – Lending Industry

Online loan providers and financial institutions must grapple with multi-accounting fraud, where malicious actors default on loans or misuse promos and payment methods for illegitimate gains.

Online Dating

In the online dating and social media landscape, the creation of multiple accounts is common, often with the intent to spam or scam users. This underscores the need for vigilance and security in these platforms.

Travel

The travel industry faces an ever-growing challenge of dealing with fake bookings and reviews, sometimes instigated by scammers or even rival businesses attempting to harm a competitor’s reputation.

Examples of Multi Accounting Fraud

Multi-accounting fraud is an issue that affects various platforms and services, leading to potential abuse and damage to reputations. Understanding this type of fraud can help businesses protect themselves against it. Here’s an overview of the most common ways multi-accounting is utilized:

Fake Reviews and Feedback: Creating multiple email addresses or social media profiles to post fraudulent reviews or feedback is a common tactic. This can be used to artificially promote specific products, services, or individual reputations. From benign attempts to inflate social connections to sophisticated click farms, this practice can take many forms.
Circumventing Bans or Negative History: Multi-accounting allows individuals to bypass bans or negative history by creating new accounts under different identities. Whether it’s a user blacklisted from a platform, or someone looking to hide poor credit or driving records, this practice can undermine trust and security.
Promotional and Coupon Abuse: Companies frequently offer promotions, free trials, and coupons to attract new customers. Multi-accounting can be used to abuse these offers, impacting various sectors such as gambling, eCommerce, and more.

Multi-accounting fraud is a versatile and ever-present threat. Awareness and proactive measures are key to protecting against its potential harms

Solutions for Multi Accounting Fraud

To combat multi-accounting, one might initially consider simply making it more difficult for users to create multiple accounts by adding more steps to the account creation process. However, this approach not only increases friction in the user experience but also does not necessarily address the underlying problem. In a webinar hosted for the online gambling sector, a survey revealed that identifying connections between various accounts is the primary challenge for fraud prevention teams.

It is crucial to collect and process all relevant data using smart rules. Although fraud managers can detect connections manually, doing so at a large scale is nearly impossible. This highlights why AI-powered rules, velocity rules, and behavioral profiling are essential solutions to sift through the clutter and provide accurate insights to determine if multiple accounts indeed belong to the same individual.

A comprehensive solution should include a multi-faceted line of defense to minimize the risk of multi-accounting, consisting of:

Device Fingerprinting: By creating unique identifiers for browsers and devices, it becomes simpler to detect when multiple users are using the same device to access a platform. While this is not necessarily indicative of fraudulent activity, it’s a crucial aspect to monitor.
IP Analysis: This involves more than merely checking if users connect through the same IP address. It also includes flagging known VPN IPs, suspicious open ports, and ISPs, with the use of the TOR network being a potential warning sign.
Email Analysis: Data enrichment techniques can transform single data points into complete user profiles. This is particularly relevant for email address attributes like domain validity, creation date, and connections to social media accounts.
Phone Number Analysis: This includes examining the carrier type, country, and social media presence to gain a comprehensive understanding of your users.

In summary, the goal is to utilize a system that combines AI and human intelligence to process vast amounts of data, validating the findings with human expertise and intuition.

See a basic overview below of how an effective fraud prevention system tackles multi-accounting abuse, based on customized rules.

The strategies described above can be applied to various verticals, and in the following section, we will explore examples of multi-accounting specific to different industries.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Detect Multiple Accounts Creation?

Explore various methods to identify multiple account creation, a common online issue. Techniques such as using cookies, local storage, geolocation, and IP address information, along with device fingerprinting, can be layered to enhance detection.

What Industries are Affected by Multiple Accounts Creation?

Industries offering sign-up incentives are common targets for multiple account creation. This practice can also be found in platforms that may ban or blacklist users due to fraudulent or prohibited behavior.

Is Creating Multiple Accounts Illegal?

While creating multiple accounts itself may not be unlawful, using another person’s real identity is illegal. Many organizations and platforms stipulate in their terms and conditions that creating multiple accounts is a direct violation, reinforcing the need for understanding and complying with individual site rules

IDcentral’s Face Trace Solution to mitigate Multi Accounting Fraud

To mitigate the risk of multiple account misuse, IDcentral offers the following AI-powered solution: Face Verification (Face Trace). This involves biometric analysis of a user’s face and facial movements to ensure true presence during the check.

First, the user goes through the Face Trace liveness check upon account registration with IDcentral. Then, the system uses the results to determine whether this user already exists in the database. This way, IDcentral’s advanced face verification solutions can help businesses ensure that users are genuine individuals—and not just the same person with an endless number of accounts.

Moreover, IDcentral’s Face Trace can be effortlessly integrated with company websites or mobile apps via Web SDK, API, and Mobile SDK. It’s a seamless part of your user verification process.

Plus, users’ facial biometric data will be reliably protected from unauthorized access, since IDcentral’s Face Trace solution has been proven secure by industry-standard tests, aligning with global regulations and standards.

What Is Multi Accounting and What Is It for?