[Mr Melbert] Johan Ozymandius - Ban Evading

[Muklan]

BYOND account: Muklan

Character name: Johan Ozymandius
Ban type: Permanent
Ban length: Permaanent
Ban reason: Ban Evasion. alt of Spencleb.
Time ban was placed: 2021-12-21 06:27:57
Server you were playing on when banned: Manuel
Round ID in which ban was placed: 175159
Your side of the story: Joined this server from on a suggestion of a post to avoid chaos of other servers and to learn the controls, was playing and went to grab a soda/make dinner and was greeted with this message on my return.
Why you think you should be unbanned: idk what caused my account to be flagged. Just trying get an understanding of what could be issue, at least from what I searched my ckey is my own and IP is whatever my ISP sets it, so beats me. Something else checked for?
References of good conduct: N/A

[mrmelbert]

Hey. Thanks for appealing, but I don't think this ban will be lifted given the circumstances.

[Muklan]

Well what is the issue then, circumstance leaving out?

[mrmelbert]

Well what is the issue then...

This account has been linked to that of a ban evader.

[iamgoofball]

Well what is the issue then...

This account has been linked to that of a ban evader.

We undo false links all the time due to false positives from bad windows copies, dynamic IP shuffling, stickyban breaks, etc. Why is this case different?

[Muklan]

I get what the ban messages says, it's plainly stated, but how so?

[mrmelbert]

Why is this case different?

t's plainly stated, but how so?

We've collected multiple cases of evidence that would imply this user is a ban evader. I won't go into detail in public due to privacy concerns / other reasons, but if any other admins or head-admins wish to know more they are free to ask me.

[iamgoofball]

This is the first time in ten years I've seen someone claim "privacy concerns" about a ban evasion case, especially to the person who got banned given that we've only got four ways to link someone to being a ban evader of a specific key(cid, ip, ckey, and stickyban magic :tm:) and historically, we've never shied away from telling someone their IP was linked to an account or that the stickyban system got them or whatever when they ask how they got caught ban evading.

[Muklan]

Well if it's a privacy concern(I get why if it's personal info) why not just relay it over a DM or group DM of just the concerned party+admins, if you have outward facing system/forum to public for transparency yet refuse to elaborate why. What's the point?

[Timberpoes]

This is the first time in ten years I've seen someone claim "privacy concerns" about a ban evasion case, especially to the person who got banned given that we've only got four ways to link someone to being a ban evader of a specific key(cid, ip, ckey, and stickyban magic ) and historically, we've never shied away from telling someone their IP was linked to an account or that the stickyban system got them or whatever when they ask how they got caught ban evading.

I can't comment on the privacy concern aspect without going into peanutology, beyond believing it to be a bit of a red herring in this discussion.

Having approved your post I wanted to give you a bit of a broader explanation for the reasons why the admin team would not want to share specific details in certain cases (such as this one).

The admin team use much more than CID, IP, ckey and stickyban magic to connect evading accounts. I don't think that is tipping the admin team's hand, evaders must be aware of this because we catch evaders outside of these 4 data points and they still come back again and again to be caught.

Ban evaders are definitely using better methods of evasion as time has gone on and are more informed about how to evade without detection. When an evasion attempt succeeds for any given period of time that information is often shared between interested circles. The team have developed tools, systems and processes beyond what is public knowledge to attempt to counter this.

This is one of those ban evasion cases where the totality of information that has gone into concluding this player is a evading ban also includes data analysis that goes beyond looking at CID, IP, ckey and stickyban magic. The exact details of how we identifed this person as an evader are only effective in the future as long as they aren't publicly known things we monitor. Once an evasion detection method is identified, it is often subverted (sometimes very easily) and one of our biggest advantages is ban evaders not knowing what we have available to detect them when they've changed CID and IP and subverted stickyban magic.

While it is reasonable to expect some detail to be given about how we detected the evasion so this player can offer up an explanation, I would argue that it is also reasonable to not publicise the ways and means we detect and trace ban evaders where alternative techniques are used alongside IP/cid/key/stickyban magic links.

No decision like this is made without backchannel discussions between the admin team.

Withholding the exact details for how we detected and why we believe they're evading will almost inevitably draw in the headmins to give a conclusion, whom are already aware of the information used to link this account to a ban evader.

This will also be monitored by MSO, whom as you know has no reason to tolerate admin fuckery behind the scenes.

As an admin team we simply ask you to trust the checks and balances in place through headmin review and MSO's ultimate oversight over the game servers to ensure no malfeasance is occurring here, and that it's in the best interests of tg's servers as a whole that we're able to hide our nonstandard methods of catching evaders.

[mrmelbert]

Going alongside Timber, I think it's fine to mention that there was an IP match used to determine the conclusion that was drawn.

In any case, I'll still have to say this appeal is denied. I don't have much else to add. If you still feel it's mistaken, you're free to let the head-admins handle it.