To be honest, cheating is no where near as much of a problem as it used to be. They was a time where daily multiple accounts would be banned and I would spend over a hour daily dealing with them all.
Users have tried lots of ways to cheat. Some are easy to detect and some are harder but typically once I found a user using a certain way to cheat, I could then find a way to block users from doing the same again or make it harder to get away with it. Some users make it blatantly obvious though.
Some of the most common methods are as follows:
1) Multiple accounts set up from the same IP address. Some users have set upwards of 10 accounts from the same IP address in the matter of a couple of hours. These are the users that seem to think we are idiots
2) Using Proxies/VPN. This can be difficult to block but we have some way to block a large number of proxies at registration (while wasting a bit of their time) but otherwise we can see all the IP's used by users here and manually we can just check the log and see at a glance if any users has made any actions with questionable IP's due to the range of information we get on each IP.
3) Some users with dynamic IP's just set up an account, reconnect to the internet and get a new IP and set up a new account. Sometimes these can be connected by all signing up under another related account as its referral but we also have a few other ways to detect these accounts which I won't make public for obvious reasons
We take alot of information from various places to flag potential malicious accounts and to confirm suspicions so we can be confident. We have also been known to get tip-offs from other sites of accounts to watch. Also some users and moderators have also been able to detect similarities or suspicious accounts aswell. Some users are even silly enough to brag about it on other sites and give tips to other users to set up multiple accounts not realising we are watching and playing with them
Can people cheat and get away with it? Yes. Many though actually lose out. Some end up making 50+ posts then decide to cheat and lose all their accounts. They spent all that time posting and get nothing... not even one cent. Sometimes we don't detect cheaters until they request a payout. Then they earn the whole 500 FC and lose them all. That is why payments are handled manually and take a day or 2 to process. It is a great time to focus on every aspect of an account and all the information we gathered on that account over the time it took them to reach payout.
Some people cheat because they just think they can get away with it with some excuses. Countless times people claim that their brother, sister, dad, mum, cousin, pet snake set up an account without their knowledge. When you hear that excuse every few days, it does get hard to keep calm
Some people do it hoping that we don't even check accounts. Some sites out there don't really care about multiple accounts and these bad users take advantage and earn alot and end up crippling the site. Any serious site will stop bad users leaching them dry.
by oldfriend » 27 Mar 2016, 15:44 
That doesn't sound like you... I have to admit that I've been tempted before, but I've never done it. 
