Please note that I don't mean to criticize the work of Jagex employees. I believe they do their utmost to make Runescape the best game they can and I thank them for it.
Dear Runescape community and creators/moderators,
Recently my account "DjDros" was banned duo to 2 offenses being accredited to the account. This is my informal, public appeal to jagex moderators to revisit my ban. I personally believe I did nothing wrong except for playing the game, which I have gotten to love again, and being caught by circumstances. I will not stop playing OSRS, even if the ban persists. However I will be deeply saddened if I don't atleast get more insight into why I was banned and my appeal was denied. If the ban is correct and jagex beliefs I was acting against the rules of the game, I would like to know what i did wrong in order to prevent it in the future.
Timeline of what happened from my POV. Dates are not exact but to the best of my recollection.
End of october 2022 - Made a new account and started playing FSW (after not having played for 8+ years). Had the best time and made a bunch of new friends.
18 april 2023 - FSW ended.
May 2023 - Took a break from playing, burned out from playing so much in FSW which was now over.
22th of November 2023 - Come back to game to play Leagues IV to find my account was hacked and botted. There was roughly 70m in items left in the account (from 1.5b), mostly corrupted gauntlet items. The corrupted gauntlet kc was botted to ~1450 where it was around 50 previously. Since I was planning on playing Leagues I didn't do anything about the main account, just bought some bonds and started playing leagues. I had 2FA through a authenticator app so i don't know how this happened but it did.
5th of december 2023 - Changed my runescape login information and installed a bank pin.
1th of January - Started playing normal game again. I got Rune rank in Leagues and therefore reached my goal.
4th of January - Started noticing my mouse was double clicking occasionally. Annoying because it makes it very difficult to play Runescape but also just do other stuff on your computer.
8th of January - Got banned whilst killing Kurasks on Runelite client. On going to the website I found there were 2 offenses on the account. #1 16-augustus-2023 Bot Busting Moderate Ban #2 Macroing Major. (Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/DHLBNf4)
Remarks on the offences:
#1 - Bot busting Moderate 16-august 2023
The offense is most likely correct. My account got around 1400 kc in corrupted gauntlet which I never did myself. I would assume IP data will show that somewhere during the time of may 2023 and november 2023, someone on a different location was playing the game. While the offense is correct, I hope the IP data shows it wasn't me who did it. If this is the case you can take whatever you want from the account to justify giving it back to me (KC, EXP, collection log, combat achievements). I don't know how the hacker got into the account, nobody knows my password (although i admit it wasnt the strongest) and i had 2fa through an authenticator app. I will do everything suggested to me (within reason) to secure my account in the future.
#2 - Macroing Major 8 january 2024
I don't know what happened to make this offense. The best of my deductive skills will say this happened because of a faulty external mouse. I was using a old mouse that was sometimes double clicking (Screenshot of Mousetester.com https://imgur.com/a/T0N0gao). It would make sense to me that an Algorithm could see that as using 3rd party software since there probably was no delay between the clicks (or the same delay atleast). I have bought a new mouse, which works fine again. Whilst I can't 100% proof over the internet that the mouse was faulty, I hope the mousetester screenshot atleast shows something (I reckon it would be quite hard to replicate a faulty mouse with a working one). The mouse is in the garbage at this point but if you want me to dig it out to send it somewhere to prove it's faulty I will (the bags are not yet thrown).
I can't think of another thing I was doing wrong during the time of this offense. I was using Runelite client, killing kurasks. If another thing besides the mouse got me this offense, I would gladly like to know how I can avoid this happening in the future.
Hindsight notes:
Things are always easy to say in hindsight, however I still want to point some things out that I would now do different if they were to happen again (with the power of hindsight).
- Spend more effort securing the account. Some count had been following me around the game for quite a while already telling me to upgrade to a Jagex account and I rudely ignored him.
- Get a new mouse sooner when problems start occuring.
- Report my account being hacked to Jagex as soon as i found out about it (Althought I'd still have to find out where/how).
Conclusion:
After falling back in love with OSRS, I belief I wasn't actually at fault for the offenses attributed to my account. I still have some goals I want to achieve in OSRS and I will achieve them, on a new account or on this one. I just hope I don't have to start over from scratch.
Best regards,
Dim Dros
DjDros