Guilty until proven Innocent

[berlow]

My CD key has appeared on "the lists" as a public one.. (is my conclusion)... and I am now banned from any server i try to connect to. This can probably be fixed, but that's being covered elsewhere.... in the mean time, a suggestion of policy change:

 

Instate Automatic Kick instead of Automatic Ban for blacklisted CD keys, giving the unsuspecting innocents (such as my former self) the same sense that "something's up" without having to cause him/her the hassle of negotiating his/her return to virtual civilization with X number of unsympathetic, uninterested people, who would also rather be playing games than guessing at the purity of our virtue and previous intent.

 

So, a poll.

 

 

And another for luck.

 

oh yeah, p.s., i posted some bogus charts to sway the "undecided voter" types... A testament to the amount of free time I've got now that I cannot connect to servers (..waiting for other Merciful Leaders to assess my worthiness for stuff)

[HSMagnet]

if the key was used to cheat, it is banned

 

you are not banned, the GUID is

 

don't use public keys

 

buy them with the full game from a reputable source

 

most places that just sell keys sell the same one over and over

[BOTA:X]

The result of the ban is that people are kicked. What the hell do you want done differently? :blink:

[blacksheep1]

"Instate Automatic Kick instead of Automatic Ban for blacklisted CD keys"

 

I prefer the auto-ban, less work for me and more time to actually play. If

your key was legit (purchased via online or included with hard copy of game)

I would suggest keeping your junkue locked up a bit tighter.

 

Sorry dude, no sympathy either way. ;)

[RoadWarrior]

Sympathy is found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

[Squealer]

We ban GUIDs, not players. This is how PBBans has always worked and will always work.

 

Innocent until proven guilty is how we work. We ban a GUID when we find a violation coming from it.

 

Oh, and why are we tyrants when we only ban with evidence?

[BOTA:X]

If a serial is leaked and used for cheating, it will be banned. It is not possible to allow you to use it and someone else not to.

 

If your credit card number was posted on some "lists" your bank would not allow you to keep it active, even if it inconvenienced you.

[Everson]

No peace and love here.

 

Bans are enforced for genuine violations, it's your job as a CD Key owner to keep that key safe.

[berlow]

if a serial is 'leaked' by someone else and not used for cheating I'm betting it's still banned.... you're not banning with evidence of cheating, only of having a serial/key other people may know.

 

and what extra work does auto-kick put on you if it's automatic? Auto-ban puts more work on the unlucky sonsofb!tches like me, unnecessarily, and for you too, having to deal with our appeals (or is that "someone else"s job?)

p.s. if you're going to insist on doing us the favour of awarding yourselves with this "burden" of sheriffhood, you should be at least willing to do the job properly (see above/below).

 

and git is found between genius and great in the dictionary, what of it?

 

 

 

[To reiterate for mr BOTA:X: An auto-kick would mean that if you've been hacked (or by some other means your key is public) but you are not intending to cheat, you aren't punished like a cheater, and you don't have to spend the rest of your virtual life begging forgiveness from people who think sympathy sounds like syphilis. You are unable to play the game, but if you realise it's your key's fault then you can sort that out and get playing before too long without unneccessary deliberation, draining your will to live, and, frankly, inspiring a good amount of contempt for the fascist rulemakers out there]

Oh and by the way, honest players who don't use cheats will not be expecting bans, and likely expect them to be "freak" occurrences for the first few connection attempts (remember, no reason is actually given to you - at least, in english - as to why you've been banned) and they may well end up banned from more servers than the actual cheaters.

 

 

p.p.s. any intelligent cheater would use the numerous cheats which go undetected by punkbuster. (I guess helping patch the holes in that cruddy software is less fun than being all Merciful and sh!t?)

Edited April 26, 2010 by berlow

[berlow]

if anyone's still not sure, check out my charts on post #1, they're gripping stuff

[Everson]

If a serial is leaked but not banned it's obviously not on the ban list.

 

Duplicate GUID kicks are enforced by a Punkbuster feature called GUIDRelax, this enables the kicking of people at various restriction levels.

 

All PBBans distributed config's contains the GUIDRelax at 0 which helps keep the servers free from invalid and duplicate keys (in use on any PB enabled server). GUIDRelax is available for any PB enabled server and is nothing to do with a PBBans setup, except the fact that we utilize it.

 

Bans are only issued at PBBans when evidence is presented for that ban. Just look at the ban records for yourself, they're as a result of "known, researched, confirmed" hacks, Punkbuster violations (determined by EvenBalance, the developers of Punkbuster) or on submission of demo/screenshot evidence. All bans are aired on the safe side, if there's reasonable doubt or a possibility that something isn't a hack it's determined inconclusive.

 

All PBBans Ban Appeals are dealt with by PBBans. Bans enforced by other lists or by EvenBalance are dealt with the organisations independently.

 

An auto-kick would mean that if you've been hacked (or by some other means your key is public) but you are not intending to cheat, you aren't punished like a cheater, and you don't have to spend the rest of your virtual life begging forgiveness from people who think sympathy sounds like syphilis.

 

Bans enforced by PBBans, enforces bans on known cheat GUIDs. If people can't protect CD-Keys then that says an awful lot about the security of their machine and what they choose to download. These keys don't just magically attach themselves to emails and distribute themselves.

 

As with all ban data the IP address responsible for the hack is displayed on the ban record. If you look through the forums you'd see that we support people who have had their keys stolen giving them appropriate advice and supporting them with information that proves they were not behind the hack.

 

However, if someone tries to pull a fast one, claims it wasn't them and the evidence says otherwise they'll be shifted to the restricted users group and their post moved from public display.

 

You are unable to play the game, but if you realise it's your key's fault then you can sort that out and get playing before too long without unneccessary deliberation, draining your will to live, and, frankly, inspiring a good amount of contempt for the fascist rulemakers out there]

 

Not true, simply unable to play the game on PBBans streaming servers. There are many anti-cheat organisations out there, are you having this argument with them all? People can still play on non streaming servers, or if EvenBalance have enforced a global ban on them non-punkbuster enabled servers.

 

Oh and by the way, honest players who don't use cheats will not be expecting bans

 

Then we're doing them a favour by highlighting their insecure system/key leak for them.

 

p.p.s. any intelligent cheater would use the numerous cheats which go undetected by punkbuster. (I guess helping patch the holes in that cruddy software is less fun than being all Merciful and sh!t?)

 

Yes some hacks are undetected but that's what cheat research is for.

[Benway]

nice pic, source of information? Obviously guesswork.

 

Your guid is globally banned by evenbalance, i.e.: wrong forum, wrong site, point missed - bottomline:

 

 

Re all other misconceptions see post #6. Just in case you still miss the point: "We ban GUIDs, not Persons"

... though: it is not our ban :) fyi evenbalance only bans a guid after they have logged it with a cheat in use ... multiple times from min. 2 different servers :P

 

Public keys will always stay banned and for good reasons, there is nothing like a "suspect" CD-Key.

[Duality]

Your post has about as much credibility as my current government. Begone, troll.

 

I removed your terribly biased poll.

[HSMagnet]

+1 Benway

 

troll OP is troll

[buttscratcher]

Sympathy is found between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

 

 

not bad. thought I'd heard them all.

 

I stopped reading a few posts later, as tired head set in with the "wordy" posts. blah blah blah

 

"pc security is my responsibility" and no one elses.

[BOTA:X]

[To reiterate for mr BOTA:X: An auto-kick would mean that if you've been hacked (or by some other means your key is public) but you are not intending to cheat, you aren't punished like a cheater, and you don't have to spend the rest of your virtual life begging forgiveness from people who think sympathy sounds like syphilis.

 

I see your point. However I think you will find that most AC admins will be able to see it wasn't you. PBBans records the IP address of everyone who uses a GUID on their servers, and we would be able to see if it was triggered by someone else. In most "stolen key" situations it is very obvious because you will see IPs of completely different countries than the original user, and the violation that triggered the ban is probably not that of the real user. In which case he would need to buy a new CD key, but his reputation would be intact, even if it had little spot on it.

 

In the case of a serial number being leaked and being proactively banned, I think you will find this is something that EvenBalance presents as a selling point to the game publisher. Gaming companies don't care as much about cheating as they do piracy, so you have to give them some sort of incentive to go with their Punkbuster product. As far as we care it at least proactively prevents some cheating because quite frankly, if a key is public it is going to be cheated with before long.

Edited April 26, 2010 by BOTA:X

[berlow]

yeah, I would also guess that gaming companies only care about sales. In the same way, I don't care about their sales, but I do occasionally like playing games (cheat-free).

 

I do at last grasp your methods, I think. If you connect with a key/serial which other people may have, but haven't cheated with yet, you don't get auto banned... right?

and, you're not permanently banned it's just a timewaster/semi-ban meaning you have to apply for 'case review' etc. ..too, right?

 

It would be ironic if someone's keys were 'stolen' and they got one of these semi-bans for "cheating" by their own server... Is that possible?

 

I guess it's just "tough luck" to everyone who has a key used by someone else to cheat.. as for me, I can't even remember the names or IPs of the servers I tried to connect to and got banned from..

 

p.s. if the cheaters do use these keys to cheat but keep their own ones to play normally (we presume), then wouldn't it be better to have an IP-ban system or something as a punishment ?

 

p.p.s. cute drawing benway, and your link didn't work. The point of the graphs was that nobody can know how many people who use public keys want to just play the game, and how many want to cheat. If this site was an anti-piracy site it would make more sense having the auto-ban over auto-kick, but it's an anti-cheater site, i presume? I played a pirate cod2 for a while before buying it (not very relevant, but yeah, a bit about me, as they say).

[berlow]

p.s. sorry to offend the twilek person, here's to hoping you don't vote BNP

[Squealer]

If you connect with a key/serial which other people may have, but haven't cheated with yet, you don't get auto banned... right?

Correct.

 

and, you're not permanently banned it's just a timewaster/semi-ban meaning you have to apply for 'case review' etc. ..too, right?

No. All our bans are permanent except the temporary one described below. They can be appealed, however.

 

p.s. if the cheaters do use these keys to cheat but keep their own ones to play normally (we presume), then wouldn't it be better to have an IP-ban system or something as a punishment ?

We have an ip-ban system in place, and those are temporary bans. However banning an IP permanently is no good as they change over time, especially with dynamic IPs.

[HSMagnet]

p.s. sorry to offend the twilek person, here's to hoping you don't vote BNP

 

no or you wouldn't have made the comment

 

you are connected to a GUID used in so many different countries as to be an atlas of locations

 

if you had acquired it through reputable means, you wouldn't be connected to it

 

 

you're only here to stir the pot and try to create drama

[berlow]

no, I'm here because I was given a cheater's ban from about 5 servers without having even so much as hit the team selection screen [with no cheats etc.]. That suggests a flawed system to me.

 

the means by which one acquires a GUID has nothing to do with his/her propensity to cheat, [although you probably think it does, like thinking that poorer people are more likely to steal], which is what this forum (should) be about.

 

there's actually a whole lot of logic in my arguments, though I didn't initially have all the facts. Some of the more constructive members here helped me out with those, and I'm genuinly glad they did.

Edited April 26, 2010 by berlow

[Benway]

Though this is (again) nothing but fishing in troubled waters, you are mistaken cheaters would "keep own legit keys", proven fact is rather "borrowed keys" were used as refund for banned pay-cheat customers. Subsequently these keys are/will be banned again, just like their legit ones.

I do understand you want "another system". this wont happen. anything but banning guids is arbitrary at best.

 

How come here are countless players who never ran into issues of that kind - i lost my key - luck? i doubt it. I had numerous GUIDs since 2002 and each of them is 'unique' up to today.

 

PS: what you consider logic is a lack of concept what punkbuster is and how it works. "Auto-kick", as you call it, is punkbuster standalone - no streaming at all - so you request rather "no system". and no, we will not waste our time with silly "watch-lists", fyi this was in effect a "warn cheaters system", we do not suspect cheaters, we ban them. evidence is given by streamed genuine punkbuster server logs. We are an AC organization, no cheater support site.

 

But again, in this case all that would not matter anyway :) as "your guid is globally banned by evenbalance"; here your 'ideas' are a plain illusion. Misconception to throw smoke alarms into the ashes when the house is already burned down.

 

i presume a flawed system as well, yours. step 1 low level format

[Squealer]

there's actually a whole lot of logic in my arguments

The graphs made no sense at all. It also suggests that a case number of 2.38930285 is possible, or 3.8129380523. For example: The amount of cases is discrete and not continuous.

[Everson]

As Benway posted though... your ban isn't even enforced by PBBans. It's enforced by EvenBalance, we are not EvenBalance.

 

MPI Details

 

You're argument is really with them and the implementation of their bans, not PBBans bans.

[Squealer]

As Benway posted though... your ban isn't even enforced by PBBans. It's enforced by EvenBalance, we are not EvenBalance.

 

MPI Details

 

You're argument is really with them and the implementation of their bans, not PBBans bans.

 

He can't see this, iirc.