Automatically suspend accounts recreated after a moderator deleted the original

Question

A common scenario we run into on Stack Overflow is that we have a troll, spammer, or obvious sock puppet of another user and moderators decide to delete this user. We go on about our business only to find out an hour or two later that the account we just deleted has been recreated, using the same credentials, and is now back to trolling, spamming, or committing voting fraud once again.

I've seen some people recreate an account like this using the same credentials four or five times (multiple times in the last week, in fact). The only thing that stops them is if we remember to suspend the account for right before we destroy it. Accounts recreated using the same credentials as an account that was suspended will be locked into the same suspension the old account was serving.

In particular, this becomes a real problem with sock puppet accounts that have a network association reputation bonus attached to them, because the recreated accounts keep getting that 100 point bonus and can immediately be used for voting fraud, to troll chat, or to spam comments. I've had to deal with quite a few puppet accounts like this by suspending them for a year before deletion.

I propose that all moderator-deleted accounts behave as if they were suspended for a year upon deletion, so that recreating these accounts using the same credentials will cause the new account to be locked in a one-year suspension. This would prevent the new accounts from being used to abuse the site in the same manner as their old account did.

This won't put an end to people creating new spam, troll, or puppet accounts after we delete them, but it will at least slow them down by forcing them to create new login credentials each time. It also would curb abuse of account association bonuses by puppets.

Answer 1

Adam Lear implemented this as follows:

• If a user is destroyed using the "spam" option or deleted using the "no longer welcome" option, a 365-day suspension is automatically recorded on the account at the time of deletion, effectively creating a situation identical to that which would exist if the user was manually suspended prior to deletion (except without triggering an email to the user).
• If the user is recreated, the system immediately re-suspends them for the duration of this 365-day period. They can wait it out of course, but this should add a significant amount of resistance to the process.
• Re-created accounts should immediately appear to moderators under /admin/users, in both the "annotations" and "timed suspension" sections. Critically, users annotated with "Remainder of unserved suspension applied to new profile" are returning users and may warrant observation.

As tempting as it is to just impose the maximum suspension here, that's probably counter-productive; for spammers looking to save a few minutes by re-using destroyed accounts, 14 days is as good as infinity; for fraudulent accounts, it's probably a wash but perhaps some value can be had in tracking via the annotation. For everything else, a 14-day waiting period should serve as an effective deterrent while reducing the need for moderator messages / support emails as a safety net - we're leaning on the lesson learned from quality-bans and rate-limits here.

Update: Due to persistent issues with users simply waiting out the 14-day period, and as moderators were frequently manually imposing longer suspensions as they repeatedly found the period to be inadequate, the period was raised to 365 days in October 2022.

Answer 2

This currently works if an account is suspended before it's deleted, to curtail the very thing you're describing. Folks were getting suspended, contacting us for deletion, and then signing up again all washed-n-rinsed of their previous transgressions.

I can see doing this automatically if:

• The account is destroyed for "spam or nonsense"
• The account is destroyed for "no longer welcome"

This would be scoped strictly to accounts eligible for destruction (mod language for delete the account and wipe all of their posts) - if an account has enough rep to disable that option, we should be proceeding manually and probably contacting the user.

If this is just a matter of inserting a suspension start date, length and automatic annotation prior to the rockets launching - it should be a no-brainer.

I'd like to point out that I'm sorely tempted to make the suspension stick at the network level if 'spam or nonsense' is selected, but that gets into mods having administrative powers that reach slightly beyond the borders of their sites, which is another discussion I'd like to revisit soon.