Conceptual Issue: Multiple accounts?

[marxzuckerburg]

Will we allow users to have multiple accounts?

The only way to limit this would be to disallow multiple accounts from being stored on one device (by having app check if its hardware-only redis-like database already has a record for a user) -- since we don't want to store IPs or sessions or cookies: actually we can't, since users are coming to us via a different IP address each time via Tor.

Here are some pros and cons I can see.

Pros

• It would allow people to make accounts with varying levels of anonymity.

  • If I want to create an account which links to my twitter, maybe I also want to create an account which doesn't?

• Multiple accounts could share QRcodes of other accounts (their public keys) by simply having them stored on the same device. That allows your alter ego to message the people your normal ego can message. Maybe that's good and bad?

• It would allow for bots.

Cons

• The web of trust gets complicated: if multiple accounts share contacts, and if someone contacts you claiming to be the alter-ego of your friend, how do you know that's true? Your friend could also 'sign' the message, so that you could verify he had something to do with it. But then does that betray the point of anonymity in the first place?

• It would allow for bots.