Factions and how to prevent abuse

[Davin]

I agree that trust is important.  And thus I wouldn't particularly trust anyone unknown with important factional information.  The reason I brought level into it is because I was assuming that a higher level meant that the game was enforcing that they at least didn't have any "significant" clans in an enemy faction.

Still, nothing is infallible.  It's always possible that someone has no particular faction they work to promote and rise in rank and all his cousins are doing is infiltrating factions that he wants to see fail and stealing information from them (perhaps for revenge?).  That kind of behavior is pretty difficult to stop.