More behind the scenes (part one)

(I've had to split this blog post into multiple parts because of its lengthiness. Additional parts will be coming up soon.)

What I would like to show you is the process that we go through when an account becomes suspect of cheating on Rescreatu. The first clue usually comes about when we are doing our daily reviews of the logs, and come across something like this (click for full size):

The arrows indicate transfers that cause suspicion. In this particular example, the red arrows are all transfers between the same two accounts, and the green arrow is a transfer between two accounts which are already known to be separate users who are not cheating. Whether or not the users making the red arrow transfers are cheating or legit is not known yet, so next, we check out the profile for "immediate" clues (click for full size):

In this example, the username displayed on the profile is the same as another username that has registered on the same IP address. Both are blocked out in red. However, these were not the usernames involved in the suspect bank transfers. Another username that was registered on the same IP address was the one involved; it is blocked out in purple. It is now time to dig deeper. We compare the transfers of each account in relation to the other. I am not going to post screenies of that part here; what was revealed indicated that everything gained in two of the accounts is being transferred regularly to only one account. At this point, experience tells me that cheating is happening, but just to be sure, more digging is necessary. The next step is to take a look at the login history (click for full size):

All but the last two digits of the user ID have been blocked out, so that you can see there are indeed three different ID's involved here. The second blacked-out column is IP addresses. The third column shows the date and timestamp that the login was attempted. As you can see, all three accounts involved were logging in and out of each account repeatedly, mere minutes or even seconds apart. The times that they logged in and out coincide with the times they sent items, pets, and TU from the spare accounts to the main account. The example only shows logins from one date, but the entirety of the login history shows the same pattern. This is the final proof needed in this case; cheating has definitely occurred and a ban is issued. 

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Multiple Account Misconceptions

When it comes to multiple accounts, there seems to be only one norm that everyone thinks of. The user creates more than one account, uses each of them and sends all of the profit to one account.

You'll often find notes on profiles that say, "Hi staff, me and my sibling _______ play on the same computer, please don't ban us!"

They then continue to play normally - and that's fine! It's when these things start happening that suspicion arises:

The sibling gets bored with Rescreatu and stop using their account.

--> The sibling 'gives' their account to their sister/brother.
--> The sibling only uses their account to make TU and give it to their sibling.
--> The sibling uses their hatches only for their brother/sister and trades all the good hatches to them.

Unfortunately, all of the above points are classed as multiple accounting. It doesn't matter if the accounts do not belong to you, if your sibling is giving you all of their stuff or simply using their account to help you, it is against the rules, whether or not you are bribing or paying them in real life or not. :c

If you are gaining a personal advantage from the account, you are cheating. Yes, we can tell. No, you won't get banned for exchanging gifts every so often, but we can ususally tell because all of the profit ends up, somehow, on one account.

So please, don't make this mistake. :) As always, any questions in the comments will be personally addressed.

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