So, one of my guildies got a 1 month suspension because he appeared to be running a VPN while doing the mage tower…
I use VPNs all the time for work! Not often on my gaming rig, but it does happen, as with him. If I am playing WoW while using a VPN to my office, am I subject to this scrutiny too?! This just seems stupid to me.
He can probably appeal it. From what I’ve heard they usually won’t ping you for a VPN unless you’re actively jumping around while logged in, because the traffic looks suspicious.
I would recommend turning yours off if you ever mess with the Mage Tower. Just to be safe.
He tried to appeal, they told him to stop appealing or they would lengthen his suspension… Seems like we are guilty until… wait… if they DECIDE we are guilty, we ARE! Regardless of what actually happened…
The sad part is, our main tank may now permanently quit the game because of this treatment.
Or maybe your guildie isn’t telling you something? 
I think the official stance is that VPNs aren’t against the rules, but neither are they officially supported. No matter how you slice it with a VPN, it would have the same look as account sharing.
^This.
Sounds like he was harassing customer support agents if they said that.
VPN use is not “supported” in that Blizz won’t help you set it up or approve it. However, they don’t prohibit it in most of their games. In rare cases it can cause a false positive with cheating detection routines - but IP is not the only thing they are looking for so that is not a common cause of problems.
The only Blizzard game that bans you for using a VPN is Diablo 2 (2000)/ LoD (2001). You get a 2 week temp ban for using a VPN or commercial internet access point.
No. Not true. Blizz is able to tell what a VPN or Proxxy is and knows that vs an actual IP change.
AND…
Sounds like he got a boost. Also not his first offense as suspensions NEVER start out at 1 month.
Okay Edit on the last part Also not his first offense as suspensions NEVER start out at 1 month. Mira corrected.
But I do find these threads odd. Seems as though someone got banned or suspended and seeing as how you are not allowed to talk about account actions on the forum, seems as though OP is speaking for a friend here.
Been quite a few of these threads lately where someone is complaining about a booster ban that happened to someone else. Must be getting paid good gold to post these threads.
For account sharing? It used to be a perma ban first time. Having someone pilot the account can certainly start at a month.
Chat offenses are the ones that start out tiny usually with a Silence for 24 hours and escalate from there.
If he wasn’t getting a boost, why would you run a VPN for mage tower? I tend to find that using a VPN or proxy often gives me an extra 50-150 ping
I also want to say, the IP address is NOT the only thing they use when determining account sharing/pilots. They have a lot more data than that, including info on the specific PC hardware. They know who is connecting, from what computer, and what activity they are engaged in.
A sudden change to a diff IP address on a diff computer only to do certain activities, then a password change after? Maybe even in conjunction with temporarily removing an Authenticator? Yeah THAT would set off flags.
Just using a VPN, no.
^this.
A weird quirk of my ISP is that my IP location moves around the country a lot. I’ve gotten IP locator reading from Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas. I am in none of those states.
I doubt anyone that was just innocently using a VPN was caught up in this mess. I bet they were looking for people who suddenly appeared to be logging in from another part of the country, successfully finished the MT and then mysteriously never logged in from another IP other than there normal range after that.
OP bounced out of this thread real quick when questioned lol
Confirming here too that I frequently use a VPN that I turn on and off in the middle of being logged in, pinging around to different locations on the west coast on different days depending on which ones are giving me problems, never gotten dinged for it. It usually doesn’t even trigger account security. Generally speaking, it seems like Blizzard is familiar with the IP addresses for most of the major VPN providers and look for a pattern of use of the same provider. That’s my assumption, as an occasional VPN-using layperson who hasn’t had an issue with it, though.
I believe that the latest banwave went out for account sharing, though, which, I’m just speculating here, if they saw that for example someone bopped to a different IP address one time in the history of their account, and that IP address wasn’t in use by a VPN provider or wasn’t used before or since, and that one time happened to be the time that someone completed the Mage Tower…
That’s just speculation on my part, though.
Yeah, I’m sure Blizz has more info than just a VPN being used.
I’m sure they can use basic detective skills also to see odd behavior.
Blizz: Oh, Billy just connected from half way around the world all of a sudden.
Blizz: Must be a VPN.
Blizz: Wait, Billy removed his protection.
Blizz: Oh, look Billy did all of Mage Tower
Blizz: How odd again, Billy changed his PW and added his protection back.
Blizz: Uhhh, normal activity detected. Moving on.
no, I didn’t bounce, I am working… I asked a question. I don’t know the specifics of his scenario, but he indicated that he didn’t feel he did anything in violation, which to me, seems legit considering when I was doing boosting for gold when it was allowed, he called me out many times.
Hell, it was an easy way to make some gold. We never piloted the clients’ accounts though, we just had them stand at the start of M+ dungeon while we blew it up.
I was more concerned that if I have game loaded when I VPN into my office, I could get banned… As much as I complain about certain “features” of this game, I quite enjoy it and don’t want to do anything to put my account at risk.
Focus on this part. You really don’t know the details and what he “feels” is fine, may not be. Chances of him getting in trouble for “just a VPN” is exceedingly slim.
There are some people who did not realize that you really can’t give anyone else access to their Bnet account. Or they think using a VPN will somehow hide it.
As long as you are not account sharing/engaging in pilots, you are normally fine. Of course, if you are worried, just don’t use the game in conjunction with a VPN.
I don’t know, man. We aren’t Blizz and can’t see what they can see. If he did nothing wrong, then they’ll decide that.
You know it sucks, but friends do lie to friends sometimes. How do you know your “friend” isn’t telling a half truth.
Basically anything that makes you look unusual compared to the masses could become something that gets you flagged, if not today then potentially at some point in the future. A lot of what Blizzard (and other game companies) do to sniff out fraud is to use quirks that set ToS-offending players apart, so they can be pulled from activity logs automatically.
An example of this are the various apps on iOS/Android that will block users from having their device jailbroken/rooted. The act of jailbreaking/rooting itself doesn’t imply any kind of malfeasance on the part of the user, but it’s unusual (very few users jailbreak/root) and easy to pick up on so those apps use it as a signal.