You can't sell your LiveJournal account. But what about the name for $$?

February 21, 2014 12:43 PM

I know I can't sell my account, but can I sell someone the account name?

By this I mean, we strike a deal for payment, we do all the necessaries (matching up email addresses and passwords and buying rename tokens), so I still have my account but the buyer has that account's former name?

I've searched the LJ FAQ and TOS but it only talks about selling accounts.

posted by tilde to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Depends on what you mean in terms of consequences. If having both of your accounts deleted is one of the outcomes you are trying to avoid, the TOS says they can do that any time they want:

By using the LiveJournal service, you hereby acknowledge and agree that LiveJournal may, at its sole discretion, block, restrict, or terminate access; suspend or delete any Account; and flag or remove any Content found within the Service, for any reason, at any time, without prior notice.

So assuming LJ finds out about it and doesn't like what you're doing, what they do in terms of your account is pretty much up to them.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:53 PM on February 21, 2014

I don't think this is possible without talking to someone in support. I've been using LJ since late 2002, and my friends' list has incurred a lot of name changes in that time. Yet I can still type something like <lj user="oldNameThisGuyChangedIn2005"> in an entry, and LJ will still make a link to the new name. I think it would break the code unless done through support.

That said, LJ makes available lists of dead accounts for which a new user can pick up a username or an established user can pick up using a rename token. I'm not sure what the inactivity threshold is for LJ to do this.

I think the best thing to do absent of support getting involved is to deactivate your account, start a new one under a new user name, wait until your old username gets moved to the dead username list, and have your buyer sign up. This can be done for free, but my assumption is you want to be paid to do this. I'm not sure if that's against the ToS, and I don't advocate doing that, but how the heck would they find out without considerably invasive investigation?
posted by tckma at 1:28 PM on February 21, 2014