[MUD-Dev] Player Accounts on a Non-Commercial MUD

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: Tand'a-ur

> What would be good ways of making sure that no one had more than
> one account? I will be requiring a non-free email addy for
> confermation, and probably logging ips. I can see someone just
> faking their ip to make a new account though and always using that
> faked ip.

You'll have to tie the account to something that the player only has
one of (or would be unlikely to have more than one of).
Body/DNA/Fingerprint/retinal scan? House? Credit Card? ID number? 
Passport number? Tax code? Social Security/National Insurance
number? Telephone number? Combination thereof?

However, I wonder if it's possible to think of something that a
punter could come up with that they'd only ever want to do once,
e.g. like a password.  PhD thesis? 600 page Autobiography?

Even so, all this gets you is the ability to tie one account to one
person.  It still doesn't stop one person using multiple
accounts. For that you need continuous retinal scanning at a
terminal that can support only a single person at a time. You have
to be able to know where the terminals are, and that they can't be
used by more than one person at a time(even by quickly hopping
between them).

So, it's a bit of an uphill battle to attempt to stamp out wilful
schizophrenia.

I think it's an intractable problem. We're just going to have to
live with the fact that whether players may control multiple
characters or not, it will be impossible to know the human beings
behind each player (unless you use biometric data).

In the virtual world, telepathy (or telegnosis if you prefer) will
be a fact of life.

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