Critical false positives: Misuse detection system incorrectly linking unrelated accounts, terminating legitimate users

I’m resubmitting this bug despite an already existing thread on the matter, in hopes that the radio silence from Roblox is due to incorrect formatting on the original post, rather than a deliberate attempt to not engage with the issue.

I will do my best to present this factually and walk you through the logical inconsistencies. I am fully open to having holes poked in my story wherever they appear, as I’m confident that the moderation action crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.

TL;DR

  • My main account, HollowAurelius, was terminated on Oct 10 for “using an account to evade moderation.”
  • I have no other terminated or moderated accounts, and I can still freely access every other account tied to the same email and IP address.
  • My prior moderation history on HollowAurelius is attached below, and limited to asset removals. No warnings, no bans, no terminations.
  • If this were a correct alt-avoidance ban, all of my alt accounts should have also been banned
  • The only new factor before termination was that I worked on public networks and a VPN from Oct 6-10. I was only logged into the account that got terminated. Accounts I was not logged into were unaffected.
  • My termination notice itself dates back over a year (05/17/24) suggesting a stale record or false automated flag.

This is but one example of a problem happening to dozens if not hundreds of developers.

A detailed Description

Myself and many others have recently received a termination notice on our accounts, citing “creating or using an account to avoid enforcement action taken against another account.”

This implies that these accounts being terminated for being used to circumvent existing moderation action taken against another account we own ,so two things must be true:

  1. We own/use another account…
  2. ..that has been moderated

however, in my case,

  1. Yes, I do own multiple other accounts
  2. No, None of these accounts have been moderated, only my main

It is impossible to “create/use an account to avoid enforcement action taken against another” if there is no enforcement action to avoid!

I have checked the moderation history of every single account I have access to, including all accounts I own and both accounts owned by my siblings - none of them have been warned, banned or terminated.

Roblox’s moderation system is making a critical, repeated, systematic error in correlating unrelated accounts, resulting in innocent accounts being terminated as if they were alts of rightfully banned users.

In all cases I’ve seen, the appeals team outright refuse to provide evidence of this connection, or the name of the originally banned account. We receive only template rejection to appeals, with no indication that our appeals have been read, with no opportunity to provide evidence to support our claim.

In my case and the majority of cases I’ve seen, the review date is listed as far back as year ago - My main account is almost 14 years old so could not have been created for this purpose.

  • This means I am being accused of having creating another account that got terminated a year ago, using a VPN
  • Thus for Roblox to correlate both accounts, they are insisting that both accounts belong to me, and therefore there should be no issue in telling me the name of the account I have been linked to.

When & Where it happens

In my case, this has happened days after working away from home, which I do not usually do. My termination occured on Oct 10.
From Oct 6-10:

  • I accessed studio, as HollowAurelius, on my Mac through my phone’s hotspot and various cafe wifi networks.
  • I separately accessed studio, as HollowAurelius, through a free VPN (ProtonVPN, again, a very popular provider) on my Mac
  • I was away from home in another city (left on the 6th, returned on the 10th)

On Oct 6 and Oct 10 only (not in-between);

  • I accessed studio and the roblox player through my home WiFi network, on my Mac, PC and Phone, on multiple accounts each,

I only include the hotspot here for full context. I don’t think it had much to do with the ban.

I have not received any moderation notices that resulted in a warning or a ban. I have attached a picture below of my account’s moderation history. None of my other accounts have a moderation history

Videos and Images

Termination notice is over a year old


(Correction/Clarification; none of my OTHER accounts have any moderation history. My main only has DMCA asset removals that I was not warned/banned for)

My other accounts, clearly linked to my main, are unaffected

(because I’ve never logged into these outside my home network)

My moderation history is only asset removals (copyrighted logos in old clothes) that i was not punished for in any way

My accounts are connected to the same email:

(Both of these accounts have been on my phone’s quick-switcher for months now)

Reproduction Steps

  1. Connect one device to a free VPN like ProtonVPN, the other to your home network.
  2. Create two fresh accounts, one on the VPN, one on the home network. Do not connect the accounts or share details or both risk being banned.
  3. Only the account connected to the VPN will get banned. Your home network account will remain unaffected
    Consistency is hard to gauge. Some people have seen all of their alts get wiped, others like me only have a single account affected. I don’t have numbers I’m afraid.
    What is more consistent is the use of shared WiFi networks in these cases. VPNs use a shared pool of IPs to mask your connection info. Free VPNs use a very small pool to save on costs.
    We know that two siblings can be banned together over a shared WiFi network. There is no reason that this would not hold true for two accounts connected over the same VPN IP.

I am using;
MacBook - MacOS Tahoe 26.0.1 (25A362), Zen Browser and ProtonVPN
PC - Windows 11 and Zen Browser
iPhone 15 Pro (Roblox App)

Expected behavior

What I would expect to happen

I would expect Roblox Moderation to foresee the issue of false links between VPN networks and either exclude VPN IPs (which are freely available) from being used to make connections between accounts, or to simply block connections from VPNs if it’s that much of an issue.

I would expect Roblox Support and the Appeals Team to understand this issue and review all available information to rectify decisions once it has been made available to them.

Most importantly, I would expect Roblox to acknowledge this issue.

I understand that user safety is paramount on Roblox, and that recently the platform has been under heavy scrutiny from the media. However, this is a deeply concerning issue and I hope it can be understood that the radio silence from Roblox is, frankly, terrifying. It is not a nice position to be in, and many of hard working developers are left wondering if we can trust Roblox to sort this issue, or if we will be forced off the platform (at risk of violating ToS with new accounts).

Original post:
Enforcement Ban System Wrongly Terminating Innocent Accounts

Similar posts:
AI Moderation Massively Terminates Accounts (Not related to enforcement bans)

A private message is associated with this bug report

28 Likes

This exact same thing happened to my son’s account Finnamous that was around a decade old. He was falsely banned a few months ago for the same reason the OP and many others have been. That his account was supposedly an alt to avoid previous punishment, which makes zero sense for the same reasons the OP mentions. He has zero moderation notices.

Over 10 appeals attempts and no human response. It now seems like he is being ghosted. The AI appeals response accused him of being hunterpup218mbk and said his name was Cindy, neither accurate of course.

My son basically grew up on this platform. His account has tens of thousands of hours invested in it and it’s all gone on a whim. Very sad and as the OP stated, terrifying.

I hope everybody falsely banned eventually find the resolution they seek.

2 Likes

Roblox appeals have so far refused to name the account that I am being associated with - do you know how your son was able to get that info from support?

3 Likes

He just kept sending appeals. Eventually one of the responses included that information.

This issue is affecting what seems to be thousands of people if not more. Just this particular one and there are multiple wide spread issues causing bans. There are numerous posts in these forums, on Reddit, on twitter, on YouTube, even check out the BBB website where there are tons of complaints that share our same exact issue.

It’s ludicrous to even consider that this can happen. In many cases these accounts are not free, as money has been spent and/or earned. Not even taking into account the time put into them. Many of these accounts are large parts of people’s lives and they are unjustly taken away with no notable concern from Roblox. Absolutely appalling.

1 Like

Most parts of this report won’t make sense to the staff because the claim that the VPN used caused the termination of the account, and therefore the accounts accessed through that IP, is not true.

How do I know this?

For example, ProtonVPN was mentioned in the report. I’ve been accessing Roblox’s platform using IP addresses provided by ProtonVPN for over a year, and recently I switched to NordVPN, and even with that, nothing has happened to my account. I have to use a VPN because Roblox has been banned in my country (Türkiye) since August 2024.

Pretty much every day, I’m assigned IP addresses that are used by thousands of other people, so that is simply not the case, speaking from my experience. :nerd_face::folded_hands:

I appreciate the reply. I know it’s not likely to be the cause going off past behavior but it is the only thing that’s changed in the days up to getting banned, unless my account was compromised somehow and logged in from somewhere else.

I think the scale and severity of this suddenly happening to thousands of people would suggest that this is a new method or a mistake in the automated system.

I’m not entirely sure if it was being assigned a poisoned IP address, or logging in from a different (albeit nearby) city, but in the 14 years I’ve had my account, and the year since the ‘original ban’ was enacted, it’s only that week leading up to the termination that anything was different.

I’ve working while traveling to foreign countries before, I’ve worked in cafes and I’ve worked in friends & relative’s homes both before and after May 2024, but none of that triggered the system. I’ve never made an account that’s been terminated, banned or even warned, including accounts I’ve lost the password to.

I wish Roblox would tell me literally anything else but that’s all I’ve got to go with!

3 Likes

UPDATE: I just wanted to give this post a bump and share that my son’s account I mentioned earlier has been reinstated. It took in total, 13 appeal attempts over the course of three months. The contents of his message were nearly identical each time, simply referencing the clear evidence the ban was unjust. FYI, we share an IP and have been on PIA VPN non dedicated IPs. My account remained intact the entire time.

While this whole experience was far from acceptable, it is certainly better than the alternative of never regaining access. So, don’t give up hope. Best of luck to you

4 Likes

That’s great news, definitely gives me hope!

Did you not run into issues having gone over the 30-day appeal window?

1 Like

Just tell them you live in a country in the European Union and get 6 months to appeal instead :victory_hand:t2::wilted_flower:

Unfortunately I’m based in the UK. I’ve requested my data through GDPR and it required a means to verify my country of residence, so I imagine they’d do the same if I made that claim.

any updates? something similar happened to a friend of mine