SR manipulation/throwing is reportable and bannable. Simply having an alt account is not.
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Alt- a player using a new account to legitimately play the from the beginning all over again.
Smurfing- deliberately deranking to play with lower level and lower rank players.
Alts arent bannable but smurfs are.
The confusion arises when people refer to alternate accounts as smurfs.
More commonly they complain about anyone playing better than them as a smurf.
Being a good player should never be against the rules.
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Depends. The definition of “smurfing” is way too broad. If you are, for example, playing on your own account that is ranked 3 stages lower than yours, or on a fresh new account? Nope, not against tos.
If you are throwing games to get your rank lowered to smurf, yep, that’s against the rules.
This forum dont stop lie.
Anyway you can cry hard because teammate smurfs usually dont report him 
so no bans.
when i smurf in bronze i got 4 lvl rep from 1
From Game Director Jeff Kaplan:
Also from Scott Mercer on Reddit
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Yes, it is reportable. Under gameplay sabotage as what they are doing is in fact against ToS.
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I wonder how it does that. Does it check your metrics like healing|damage/time and weapon accuracy, kills/deaths per match? I imagine a smart enough system can determine those things.
Making new accounts sounds dirty though. against rules or not, you should stay where you’re at in terms of rank and not rank down. That said, feed Blizzard mo’ money 
that gives me new games and updates in the future.
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Nothing wrong with smurfing, morally or otherwise. If anything you are contributing to continued development of the game by buying an alternate account and also people should be grateful that you are showing them how the game should be played by punishing their mistakes
It’s a grey area and blizzard likes to leave it at that,
They probably have some plans to combat it, but they will wait until OW2 to implement a new system.
Notable hints to spot that it is a smurf:
- They play better than anyone else in the match by a large margin, or purposely avoids fights/dies to lose and derank on purpose.
- Their portrait has a bronze color (Low level) and his endorsement level is 1-2, usually 1.
- If their profile is open and he only has very few seasons played or has a drastic spike change from one season end rank to another.
- A lot of time they are cocky and provoke in all chat.
- Because it’s an alt account, many times smurfs can also be cheaters, because they don’t care about that specific account, so be on the look out for aimbotting/wallhacking in kill cams.
In my opinion, If you suspect someone is smurfing ( and Boosting or Throwing) clearly above his rank, please report them both for cheating and gameplay sabotage with reason :
“High level player account boosting/throwing at low ranks, ruining the integrity of the games.”
Having said that, unfortunately It takes thousands of reports for it to even be flagged, let alone suspended, so they don’t care.
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Not on console hell. Unlike on PC you can make make infinite smurf accounts for free.
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Yeah, I’ve heard of the hell that is console Overwatch. Considering how bad PC can be, console sounds unimaginable… 
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nope but i certainly wish it was
If it was I’d have been banned years ago. Same with being boosted actually.
Trouble is, do we define a smurf as someone who is just in a lower tier than they should be due to an alt account or deliberately deranking?
I have an alt account and I have maintained a higher SR in my alt account. I’ve been around 2050/2550/2450 on my alt for three seasons, so not an anomaly. My main account the highest I’ve got is 2001SR. Does that make me a smurf on my main account? I don’t think so. I blame doing my placements for competitive too soon on my first account, which is the reason I wanted to try doing my placements once I actually knew what I was doing!
I think the way around this problem is to raise the competitive account level entry requirement to level 50, maybe even higher, or encourage players to hold off comp placements until they’re sure they are ready. I honestly wish I hadn’t done my placements at level 25 on my main account. Grinding out of a low SR is very, very hard work sometimes.
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That part is there because of consoles. Psn and xbox live say you can have as many accounts as you want. Blizzard cannot change that if they wanted to
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Well Smurfing does arguably “give an unfair advantage to players” and therefore it has always been reportable as a “Gameplay Sabotage” offense.
Jeff did officially state a few months ago that they do actually consider Smurfing as a problem and that they’re looking for a solution, but the fact that such horrible behaviors actually earn them money, along with Overwatch’s Report System most probably being automated (and therefore constituting a severe case of false advertisement) collectively don’t give me much hope for the future…
how does one know with certainty that a player is smurfing?
in the absence of certainty, a report for game sabotage is a false report, and false reporting is rule-breaking, and an actionable offense
I find it reprehensible that some players not only engage in this rule breaking behavior but try to get others to file false reports as well
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loosing on purpose is against it.
Winning not.
Ow is terrible at this.
I can one trick hero y to silver and take my main back to plat.
Which means playing a hero i don’t main is throwing imho.
Which isn’t but kinda is.
Not sure if a system detects this…
I get regular games on widow hitting 2 hs.
Next game 22 hs.
You can also handicap yourself…
Nope, despite the fact that smurfs are terrible and ruin the game, Blizzard loves the money they generate.
Smurfs are here to stay.