Currently, multiple accounts held by the same person is possible.
Reasons
- Privacy. Keeping your private stuff separated from your professional life.
- Responsibility. Keeping the office domains in one account which can be shared among the several techies at work.
- Complicated identity management that goes beyond the system's capabilities. At the moment that includes anyone with more than one name, but this is addressed in the future designs. In the future it might be more limited to people with very rare cases such as dual genders.
Lost accounts. See FAQ/LostPasswordOrAccount.
Pros
Allows complicated identity management that goes beyond the system's capabilities.
Cons
Makes it possible for a Member to get Assured with two accounts and deliver double points for one Assurance.
Controls
Fundamentally there are these controls:
- DoB is often matchable across accounts of the same person.
- Assurance over the same person creates a trail.
Strategy
It might be possible to ban multiple accounts. Or to ban multiple assurances from two accounts. Or to put the onus on the holder of multiple accounts to hold a higher standard.
Also note that there is Arbitrations/a20090510.3 on this.