Proactive bans expanded to cover spam

Since the multi-account proactive system has been working pretty well, I've added in a simple check for spam accounts. Immediately the system identified about 50 accounts which do appear, on a manual check by me, to be obviously spam accounts. This should help us to deal with this issue.

But what if some of them aren't spam accounts?

Dassault Papillon: Then they have 24 hours to appeal to me as usual. Or, after banning, they can still email me.

admin: The bans on the Aedai siblings was outrageous

What were the bans on those accounts even based on? #FreeAedai

Priest of Swag: Multiaccounting. I can't reveal the exact internal data the system uses but they can easily get their accounts back by just talking to me, regardless of whether the system was right or not. So far I have no communication from either of them.

admin: I am only wondering what your system was basing it off.

Also the rest of the internet doesn't work like that. More likely than not, when someone gets banned without a reason, they are just going to disappear.

Priest of Swag: "They" (if they are several) are aware that the reason is suspected multiaccounting, and also that they can easily contact me to get "their" accounts back.

Broadly the system takes into account IP data, usage patterns and other account data edeb8 collects. It used to use just IP data but I refined it until it was smart enough to catch RM's multis. I strongly suspect the number of false positives is minimal - people only need contact me to get them back anyway.

admin: Well IP should only be used discriminately, like when you were trying to catch RM. I know for a fact that often IP's can be confused and also shared in many instances. Combining it with usage patterns isn't bad though.

Basically what I am imagining with those two accounts is possibly some kind of family situation.

Priest of Swag: If they simply explained that to me, all would be fine.

admin: I guess in this situation you would be right, but I would like to make another contention.

You should reach out to the individuals for a period of time before banning them, provided they are not obvious spam accounts and have relatively recent activity.

Priest of Swag: I already do. They each had a long warning period and chose not to respond in that time either, despite being online.

admin: Why do you talk to yourself through your two accounts?
Priest of Swag is one of yours.
Or is there something I am mistaken about?

Bi0Hazard: Priest of Swag merged with my account, Csareo. He is talking with me.

Crow: how did you merge with Priest of Swag?

Bi0Hazard: Ask admin, he was the one who did it. I believe he just changed to my original name.

Bi0Hazard: If you changed your name to Stag Mark IV, Stag 3.0, or Csareo, it would probably do the same thing.

Crow: Yip, exactly. Stag found a way to basically make your own account insecure if you do something very weird. I'm working on a fix.

Fun fact. I just did a check on a bunch of the IP addresses that have been caught under this, and ALL of them I checked resolved to the city of Nellore, just above Chennai, in India. There must be one heck of a dedicated operation going on there for them to bother targeting a site like this lol.