Not to say you're wrong, but I don't count this as Credit Theft. I consider it cash theft from x10.
And this is why. Credits can be used in the x10 rewards center for emails, domains, and cash payouts. With the exception of the emails, each one of those costs x10 money to pay out on.
Stealing credits is like stealing the $5 paypal payout from the rewards center, thus draining x10 of cash that could be used to keep the servers stable.
So my opinion? Anyone not getting banned from all of x10's services who is or has stolen credits is getting off light.
I'm a bit of an extremist though.
I agree it's theft, sneaky & dishonest, but let's put it back in perspective here.
They haven't killed anyone or robbed a bank, most probably didn't even realise what they were doing was wrong, & they have been duly warned & punished.
And whilst they effectively stole credits, it wasn't the $5 worth that you mention. If they got ~200 credits for a new sign-up, & it takes 7500 to get $5, then they only actually only got the equivalent of $0.13 worth. This is not to be sneezed at (depending on your income) & certainly still not acceptable (since lots of people taking $0.13 soon adds up for x10hosting) but, as I say, let's get it in perspective!
I would have thought, though, that just as important as the 200 credit theft, is their wasting of x10's resources, both in the hogging of additional accounts (with their inherent reserved server space etc) & also in the extra time it takes staff to administrate all these pointless accounts.
This said, I can't help wondering how many of these "fraudsters" actually set up new accounts not so much to steal credits, but to change their username to something more relevant to their current needs. With their new account set up, it would be only natural that they would want to transfer credits from their old accounts, with them only (wrongly) viewing the new 200 credits as a bonus! However, I suspect (correct me if I'm wrong) that the members being named-&-shamed here are mainly those who just set up new accounts in order to transfer the new free credits back into their original accounts?
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