I'll answer right away: 1) There have always been spam accounts on forums since as far back as I have been using the internet, and there are several procedures and practices that have exist to keep spam accounts away, especially with the CMS system the site uses. Let's keep things 100%: Most of the accounts registered here on this site are spam accounts. Some aren't even actual users. It's why I balked at the manual account check that you mentioned, especially when, shortly after your post, I got a private message by a user about some inheritance (and I'm not joking, I have attached a screenshot). This is a major problem. 2) I wouldn't say that duplicate account takes up server space (other than an entry in the site database, not really), and having two different computers with two accounts doesn't mean he can download things faster, because as far as I know the site is hosted on one server and there are anti-leech protections in place due to the content management system that the site uses. Not exactly a drain on resources. Technically, all a duplicate account could do from a functionality standpoint would be to simply enable the user to circumvent the download system which, as we have both stated has no longer been in place.