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Bot bans non-existent with one factor change


DylanSRT

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I created 5 member accounts about 6 months ago to test some of the factors that I thought would affect bans. Some of my discoveries have been very helpful for my bots so I thought I would share. All of these are with mirror mode btw. If you are still using injection in this day and age, you deserve to be banned anyway. Developers have openly stated that Jagex has had or might still have a detection method for injection (screenshot below). Whereas mirror mode is like using a mouse macro with much higher capabilities. It is my theory that Jagex has to manually check your bot to determine if it is botting if you are using mirror mode. The only decisive auto-bans (without validation by a Jagex employee) occur when using injection because they can detect your client.

As people have noted many times before, botting on new accounts has an extremely high ban-rate. One of my lvl 3 accounts was devoted to botting only 1 hour per day (different scripts every day). And it was still banned within a week. I tried a couple of other things and they did not help avoid bans on a lvl 3. But then, I decided to try avoiding botting during Jagex working hours (8am - 7 pm to be safe). I know people have mentioned it before but I never saw anyone definitely saying if it worked or not. I ran custom scripts on this level 3 account 4 hours per day for 2 months outside of Jagex working hours and had not been banned. Then, I decided to bump it up to 8 hours per day, and still no ban. This is pretty much unheard of on a lvl 3 new account. 

If you think about it, it starts to make sense. They probably have a couple of employees devoted to just going through the flagged account list all day to determine if those people are botting at the moment. I also think new accounts are automatically added to this list (up to a certain amount of playtime, levels, quests etc). I'm sure they have access to tools and metrics to expedite the process of determining if you are botting in realtime. It would explain why you can get away with botting sometimes for a long period of time. Maybe you were just getting lucky at the times they looked at your account and you were not botting. But, eventually they will catch you in the act. It would also explain why they made worlds to put suspected botters in. These worlds could have different parameters to make it easier for a Jagex employee to determine if you are botting. Logistically it makes sense too because it would take up so much space to collect data or even video of suspected botters. It would be much cheaper to just do it in realtime. 

So like I previously stated, if you are using mirror mode, I think that your account can definitely be flagged for factors like playing for too long, reports, new account etc. However, even with a flag, it must be validated by an employee manually so you cannot be auto-banned. The only exception to this might be for very popular bots.  They could buy popular scripts on this site to create code to identify them and this can lead you to get auto-banned even without an employee validation. I am currently testing the same thing using SDN scripts instead of custom scripts to see if it makes a difference. 

TLDR: Use custom scripts (non-SDN) outside of Jagex working hours on Mirror mode to avoid being banned on a level 3. Try it for yourself and let me know.

 

 

Edited by DylanSRT
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27 minutes ago, Zummy said:

What is your sample size?

I've made 3 other bot account since I noticed this and none of them have been banned still. In the past, almost every account I made using the same exact botting schedule has been banned within a week. But this is the most significant trend I have ever noticed with ban avoidance, and I've made A LOT of accounts to farm various things. I would suggest everyone try it themselves and see if it works for you.  Obviously this isn't an exact science and there are possible exceptions. Nothing is 100% safe. Maybe an employee stays late one day and catches you. Maybe they have designated people in America and Australia working so that they have all 24 hours of bot monitoring (doubt it). At this point though it has definitely left the realm of coincidence and become a solid trend for me. Read the new paragraph I added about why it logistically makes sense for them to do bot validation in realtime.

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I think you have a few false premises. One of them being that Jagex bans manually. Jagex has stated that they've banned over 300k accs in one month previously. If they spent at least 1 minute per account they'd need over 5000 hours of work every month to review that many accounts and ban them. Most of the detection and flagging is already automated, Weath just has to press the button or run whatever program to ban most of them, I'd say a very small percentage of the accounts actually get reviewed.

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23 minutes ago, IDontEB said:

I think you have a few false premises. One of them being that Jagex bans manually. Jagex has stated that they've banned over 300k accs in one month previously. If they spent at least 1 minute per account they'd need over 5000 hours of work every month to review that many accounts and ban them. Most of the detection and flagging is already automated, Weath just has to press the button or run whatever program to ban most of them, I'd say a very small percentage of the accounts actually get reviewed.

Fair point, but

A. Do you really trust what Jagex says? 

B. This was likely due to their ability to detect injection. Mirror mode is used by a very small percentage of botters overall I would say. It's just a hassle for many people to open clients manually.

C. If you took the number of flagged accounts of people using mirror mode and then further narrowed it down to people that are online at the moment and then even further narrowed it down to people who are in hotspots for botting, I think it would be a manageable number. And they wouldn't come back to an account until they went through the whole list (so maybe it would take a few days or maybe a few weeks to check back up on the same flagged account).

D. If they truly had some sort of magic code it would have to be for a popular script. Otherwise, how could you possibly make a code to detect something that you don't even know you are trying to detect. What other information could they possibly code to determine you are 100% a bot other than the client you are using? Even if you were playing for 48 hours in a row, how could they determine that you were botting unless they manually checked? It would explain why many people have gotten away with even using simple mouse macros and clicking on the same pixels over and over again. It all comes down to the client. 

Edited by DylanSRT
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5 hours ago, DylanSRT said:

Fair point, but

A. Do you really trust what Jagex says? 

B. This was likely due to their ability to detect injection. Mirror mode is used by a very small percentage of botters overall I would say. It's just a hassle for many people to open clients manually.

C. If you took the number of flagged accounts of people using mirror mode and then further narrowed it down to people that are online at the moment and then even further narrowed it down to people who are in hotspots for botting, I think it would be a manageable number. And they wouldn't come back to an account until they went through the whole list (so maybe it would take a few days or maybe a few weeks to check back up on the same flagged account).

D. If they truly had some sort of magic code it would have to be for a popular script. Otherwise, how could you possibly make a code to detect something that you don't even know you are trying to detect. What other information could they possibly code to determine you are 100% a bot other than the client you are using? Even if you were playing for 48 hours in a row, how could they determine that you were botting unless they manually checked? It would explain why many people have gotten away with even using simple mouse macros and clicking on the same pixels over and over again. It all comes down to the client. 

To answer in order:

A) They have no reason to lie about a the number of bots they ban since if it's too high it makes it seem like the game is infested with bots. If it's too low then it makes it seem like they're not doing anything at all.

B + C) You can get the benefits of mirror mode while still using injection if the client does it properly.

D) There's quite a bit you can infer about whether a player and use that to determine if a player is a bot or not simply by logging in. They don't even have to run a script. Those markers aren't instant bans, but they do raise the right flags.

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Thanks for posting your findings. 

For clarification, are you a non-member? In my experience, I used to get banned between 4AM->5AM (Pacific Time) on f2p minebots. From what I've heard, not actually experienced is, MEMBERS accounts must be manually reviewed before a ban is applied. 

Also, what bots are you using? Fightbots, minebots, fisher bots? 

Edited by asdttt
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  • 2 weeks later...

Botting is absolutely systematized. The oldest anti-cheating efforts relied heavily on automated software, today in the age of machine learning it's become much more advanced. Flagging accounts/ips absolutely happens, and it can be triggered by using the wrong proxy/VPN or like you said, getting the client detected. Manual bans are pretty rare, and the reason they won't ever provide "evidence" for your ban is because all of their evidence is algorithm-based.

Mirror Mode on an unflagged proxy is the best case scenario and will possibly last that account forever as long as it doesn't get manually reported.

You are not totally safe even in Mirror Mode. How do I know? I had several Thieving bots I was babysitting that didn't get off of a certain NPC when asked, it got mass reported by everyone in the room. Next day, banned every time. It's pretty clear that botwatch only runs on accounts that are flagged somehow, if it decides to analyze you, you're out of luck even in Mirror Mode. If enough people report you whether on Mirror or Stealth, it seems you're going to get flagged.

Edited by caketeaparty
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14 hours ago, caketeaparty said:

It's pretty clear that botwatch only runs on accounts that are flagged somehow,

Every single account logged in game is being analyzed by botwatch. you have no idea what you're talking about. 

 

14 hours ago, caketeaparty said:

Mirror Mode on an unflagged proxy is the best case scenario and will possibly last that account forever as long as it doesn't get manually reported.

LOL

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