Thanks for the quick replay,
descalzo. Let me send you some hints yet.
Yes there's a couple of accounts linked to one subject as you have researched well. Congratulation! I'd like to say that it's NOT intended to abuse your system in any way. There's no need to search any complexity in it. I think there's nothing harmless at all. Just treat it as a personal project. But I understand it can raise your attention. But why? Too many patterns?
Anyway I really do not understand few things.
1. "Since each person is allowed one forum account and one hosting account"
How do you want to track that? By IP? How about shared IP then - shared gateway? What "each" person means exactly? Let's suppose I'm 8th times different then. I don't think it would be wrong to have multiple accounts here. Of course in reasonable way and without "server resource" abusing.
2. "Eight accounts all registered the same day"
I suppose your server is registering much much more accounts per day than some 8th. I understand that as long as there's no flooding, all should be fine.
3. "All with similar names"
Do the names really matter? What "similar" means? I don't think that the name really maters here. It's all unique names no matter when characters are inside. E.g between Bob and Alice names there could be more similarities than e.g Anita vs Anita2. Did you specified characters distances?
4. "All logged in to the Forum earlier today"
Your rules say something - to keep the accounts alive, you should log into forum at least once per month. And you don't even have to post there.(?) So I tried. Do you specify there how quick I should perform this task? Let's suppose I'm quick enough. Again it's not mean to be abused. This is just another kind of "silly" rules among the great service you are providing.
I'd suggest you to modify the rule -> log into forum once per month after having some tasty dinner with lovely woman, wear a black (washed) t-shirt, check if it's not raining...
Few local rules are just silly. I understand you worry about security. But security is behaving differently.
So when I register e.g. 50 various accounts within e.g 20 days with e.g "not so predictive" names via e.g. different comps and log to forum within e.g 14 days with each account via different comps via different OS via different browsers - I'll be ok, right?
As long as the accounts are not abussive I'd forget about "multiple accounts, each person" wrong rules.
I'd like to have my accounts back, but I'm not sure now
Greets