General [INFO] About unbanning accounts

castix · September 15, 2015

This topic addresses all the people asking for unbans, bypassing bans or basically unrestricting their account from the game/app services. In all of the cases below you will see that a clean unban of your account is not possible. Please refer to the ban type of your concern. The ban types listed are only written from my awareness and knowledge. If you find another ban type and are curious how it works let me know and I will add a short article in this thread. Thank your for reading. It would be kind of you if someone asks about a unban you could link them to this topic.

Please note that from the point you installed a cheat on your device, you are risking to get banned from the app and you take the full responsibilty of the consequences.

What Is A Ban

A ban can come very differently and varies from developer to developer. Ban means you are excluded from the game community. Your profile is suspended and can not be used anymore in it's usual way. In other words it blocks you from using the app again as it defines a punishment for abusive behaviour or breaking the rules. You can not only be banned in apps or games, even iOSGods has rules and if you can't follow them, you will also be banned depending on the severity.

Ban Popups

When you open the app a popup will appear with a custom message from the developer, telling you that your account has been suspended or what so ever and you are not able to use it any longer. I know that you can remove the ban popup with reverse engeneering but remember that this does not apply for every app! If it's the case that you can get back into the app because of removing the popup. That probably means the account was not banned at any time. The app just detected the cheat and didn't let you pass through that popup. Again only a few apps use that so lower your expectiations and don't request a removal of the ban popup as it's depending on the app.

Editing Keychain Database

This method has been around for a while. It works for lots of games and there was indeed positive feedback from the end user's side. In fact many people don't know what they are actually doing rather than just following a tutorial. Explaining keychains it's a register for app information stored in key values. The app can read the information from the Keychain database and load the state. While editing a keychain value does not work, you can simply delete it. Thus, for instance a game can't find any saved states on the user's device and it thinks the game was installed for the first time. Be very careful with deleting Keychain items because it also stores sensitive data. If you are not 100% sure what you are about to do better leave it before messing up your device. That also counts for deleting the whole keychain-2.db... You see, instead of unbanning your account it gives you the opportunity of starting all over again, which is great by the way but it is not unbanning! A clean unban would be when you could continue your game progress from the last saved state.

IP Bans

IP bans are very different from other bans because unlike your account, it bans your complete IP address which means no device using that IP address can access the app anymore. Pretty annoying when you're not the only one in your family who uses the app huh. On the other side, if your account is not really banned, because it's just the IP which is blocked, you can make use of VPN services and bypass it. By connecting to a VPN (Virtual Private Network(s)) all the online traffic from the connected devices will go through a custom IP address. In other words it spoofs your real IP and pretends to be a false IP from Africa or what so ever. This does not protect your device from getting IP banned again or another type of ban though.

Flagged Save States

It happens that some developers add tiny checks in their apps or servers and flag a save state as cheated. Some games warn you about that, some not so you can't tell by not getting a warning that your save state is not corrupt. Also here there is no way to remove the flag of your save. Equivalent to the Keychain method, there's also a solution for resetting your save state. With a file manager of your choice it's possible to replace the save files with a new save. It is also possible to use a modded savegame again as long it is not flagged from the anti-cheat system.

Server Issues

The most effective way of a ban is when you cannot connect to the server. The server has a good anti-cheat system and doesn't let you connect. It certainly detects particular features of a cheat and not the cheat itself. Myself, I am not even sure if your account is really banned or if it's just a blocking layer like the ban popups because so far nobody has managed to pass through the server connection. A proposal of me is that you would have to change something in the hosts file but don't ask me..

Updated September 15, 2015 by castix

NitroxicDemon · September 15, 2015

Very informative , nice work

Svensken · September 15, 2015

Good share Castix

Diversityy · September 15, 2015

Rook · September 15, 2015

Nice and informational topic.

Nosoupfoyou · April 22, 2016

So How does an antiban in a hack work? For example, darkness reborn has an antiban feture in its hack...does that just stop the system from detecting any cheats, but the account could still get banned if people report that account for suspected cheating? Or does the antiban actually prevent being banned period? Thanks for any info!