[gautamcgoel]

May I ask how do you know it's the same person across accounts? Do you guys track our IP addresses or something?

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm not a mod, but they almost certainly track the IP addresses of people who create accounts. It's basically impossible to do spam prevention otherwise.

[hutrdvnj]

I think that most people don't have static IPs and then there are proxies and VPNs... I don't think that IP is a meaningful identifier. From my experience IP bans never really work, except maybe for range IP bans, but then you might affect other users too and of course you could still circumvent it with a VPN.

[Wowfunhappy]

I once created a throwaway on HN for something sensitive, and I happened to be on a VPN at the time. My comment started out dead and I had to vouch for it on my main account.

So I think that's just the tradeoff they make, in order for HN to be able to exist. It probably gets reversed if you email the support link.