Unfortunately, Eric, it truely is impossible for a GM to prove players are
really cheating. And Hotmail, while a very popular
way for people to do this, is not the only way. For example...
Let us say some one works at an office and he recruits his fellow
employees to run "dummy" possitions for him. The company may have
multiple IP numbers, so you cannot look at the source IP alone to
determine if this PBeM "player" is real or a "front" or, in PBM, we
used to call them "clones".
So this person clones 7 to 8 players where he works, and his home email
address for another. If he gets fancy, he'll have his clones
get hotmail accounts through their work addresses so that other
players don't see a lot of email addresses with the same "address".
It also means that the fellow worker can ignore email addresses to
the Hotmail account. And he never writes anything to other players
from these clones so that players [who tend to check out the origin
of messages more the GMs do] don't back track it and find the IP
which generated the message to Hotmail.
I am also told, but don't know for a fact, that AOL allows up to 3 email
addresses per account. People could clone that way as well.
And how can a GM prove that a father and son aren't really playing?
My son is 11 and he's interested somewhat, but not enough to really want to
try yet. In another 2-5 years, he may be a player too.
Its nice to think that cheaters will be removed, but even when you have
tracked it down and present documentation to a GM, it really
comes down to your word against his. And the GM will do nothing
because he cannot take one player's word over another.
So you may as well not worry about it. I don't. I figure that any
one who "clones" is pretty lame. He is obviously a bad player.
His need to cheat is proof that he is a worse player than I am.
And deep down in his sniveling, cowardly, little heart, no matter
how many players he grinds into the dust, he KNOWS too. He gets a
"rush" every time he wins a battle, but in the back of his head
there's a nagging little voice that reminds him that if he was not
playing multiple slots, he would be losing.
And then there are the really _sick_ ones who talk themselves into
believing that "everyone else can do it too, so I am only doing
what they could do if they were smart enough to do it themselves."
Hence, they really believe that cloning proves they are better
players than the "fools" who do not.
Denile, you may have heard, is not only a river in Egypt.
Jim Frediani