[tor-talk] registration for youtube, gmail over Tor - fake voicemail / sms anyone?

[Mike Hearn]

> Why are anonymous signups assumed guilty of abuse before anything happens?
> How about limiting usage initially, with progressive raising of limits based
> on time elapsed with non-abusive behaviour (something like credit card
> limits)?  People should be able to establish good *online* reputations that
> are not tied to their physical identity.

We do some of that, actually. Accounts that are young are examined
more closely and treated more aggressively than older more established
accounts. Account sellers know this and sometimes try and sell "aged
accounts" for a higher price (not that it works).

But as Andreas Key correctly points out, there must still be a way to
throttle abusive signups. When signup or login security fails badness
follows, often at huge scale.

There's always some collateral damage from these schemes
unfortunately. Eg, CAPTCHAs are poor for blind users. Phone
verification is poor for Tor users, or users without phones.

If you would like to see the effect our signup security efforts have
had for yourself, visit buyaccs.com and compare the price of gmail.com
vs hotmail.com accounts.