Ban Appeal: Jsaifie

[Jsaifie]

Hello!

I've looked into my banning circumstances on the ToS disocrd as I was unable to through here (I did not have the password for my forums/game account, and the reset password option wasn't working with my email). Thankfully, ToS Support very kindly helped me fix this issue and I am now able to login to file an appeal. Before this however, on the discord server I was pointed to screenshots of the chat of the match in question, and this was when I was sure I was banned for something that wasn't done by me!

Please note that the HS/Harassment that I was pointed to was very extreme, and I have no prior history of doing anything like this on my more than 3 years old Steam Coven account. I noticed that my regular password didn't work for ToS a while back but never cared to change it because I was always able to login with the "Login With Steam" button without having to input my password manually. I now know that the reason it didn't work manually was because my password had been changed. To confirm my suspicions, I visited the site https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and found that my account had indeed been compromised in one of the game's mass data breaches (I have images as proof but I can't post images here, perhaps I can contact you on discord to provide the images). I hope there's a system in place that allows you to check login times and login locations to confirm a location difference.

In short, I believe the events that lead to the banning of this account were the results of this account's breaching during Town of Salem's mass data breach in 2018. I have no history of doing something along these lines and would never. My password has subsequently been changed. This is an account that I've had for many years and have put a lot of hours and money into, so I hope you can look into this and understand the situation. Thank you.

- Jsaifie

[alex0423]

poking for trialbot

[TrialBot]

Here are your reports:

• Hate speech/Harassment
• Hate speech/Harassment

[Flavorable]

You changed your password after the data breach and there have not been any breaches since then.

[Jsaifie]

Thank you for responding. I never changed my password after the breach until recently when Town Of Salem Support helped me reset it through email. As I said in the post, my password had been changed unbeknownst to me, and I was unable to login manually, only being able to access my account with the "Login with Steam" button. I'm sure now that I have reset my password myself, it'll only be me on the account unless there is another breach.

Perhaps there is a way you can check IP addresses for different login times to see for yourself? I hope so. I implore you to look into this as I would have never foolishly acted in such a way to get this account banned, which I invested several hours and money into. Thank you for understanding.

[Jerme]

There is a passwordchange logged on early January 2019. During that time there had not been any decrpytion of the passwords been and as well was the IP of the change the same as the activation one of your account.

[Jsaifie]

I've never changed my password for this account other than recently (13 hours ago) in order to gain access to forums. However, I checked my inbox just to make sure and I found something strange. There is a "Welcome to Town of Salem" email from January 5 2019 as if I had just created the account then, but I have been playing for long before that date. I believe this discrepancy to be evidence of meddling with my account and its password. I can send photograph proof through discord if necessary.

Early January of 2019 (Jan 7) is also around the time my account had been unbanned for spamming in the past, so the "password change" you are seeing may just be the reactivation of the account without the password actually changing. You can confirm this by checking my post history.

[Jerme]

THe passwordchange is dated earlier than the 7th January, the activation of the forum account happened a few minutes earlier and is seperately logged.

[Jsaifie]

That actually further supports the fact that there was outsider involvement. If the forum account activation occurred PRIOR to the password change like you said it did, it would make sense that this alert would have prompted them to change the password as to prevent their loss to access. Had my forum account been created AFTER the password change, that would point to me being the one changing the password in order to be able to create a forum account. Since what happened is the opposite, it should be clear that it would not make sense for me to reset a password shortly after creating one, and this was done by someone who already had access to my account and wanted to prevent their loss of the account access when they had been prompted that my forums account was created.

I believe this warrants the grounds for an appeal as I have changed the password myself recently, effectively blocking out the breacher from accessing my account again. Considering all the evidence here, I believe the best course of action would be to give this thing another shot now that there's no chance for any account intrusion.

[Flavorable]

That actually further supports the fact that there was outsider involvement. If the forum account activation occurred PRIOR to the password change like you said it did, it would make sense that this alert would have prompted them to change the password as to prevent their loss to access. Had my forum account been created AFTER the password change, that would point to me being the one changing the password in order to be able to create a forum account. Since what happened is the opposite, it should be clear that it would not make sense for me to reset a password shortly after creating one, and this was done by someone who already had access to my account and wanted to prevent their loss of the account access when they had been prompted that my forums account was created.

I believe this warrants the grounds for an appeal as I have changed the password myself recently, effectively blocking out the breacher from accessing my account again. Considering all the evidence here, I believe the best course of action would be to give this thing another shot now that there's no chance for any account intrusion.

You will have to wait for an Admin to check into this, since they should be able to deduce.

Keep in mind that if your password got changed, said "hacker" would also have had access to your e-mailaddress, since one can only change their password from a link sent by e-mail to the e-mail that is linked to one's account.

[Jsaifie]

Yes I am aware of this. This would make sense since the 2018 Town of Salem data breach also compromised email addresses, and I confirmed that mine was affected by visiting https://haveibeenpwned.com/ where it stated "In December 2018, the Town of Salem website produced by BlankMediaGames suffered a data breach. Reported to HIBP by DeHashed, the data contained 7.6M unique user email addresses alongside usernames, IP addresses, purchase histories and passwords stored as phpass hashes. DeHashed made multiple attempts to contact BlankMediaGames over various channels and many days but had yet to receive a response at the time of publishing."

I appreciate you for having an Admin look into this. I look forward to your reply.

[Jerme]

BMG was on vacation that day, but later noticed it and acnnounced it, whilst informing every user with an email connected to the game account. The first password hashes were cracked mid 2019, later than the password change of your account happened.

[Jsaifie]

With all due respect, this seems like irrelevant information as it doesn't really prove or disprove anything in this particular case. It's clear that the data breach compromised email addresses and obviously the usernames. Even if account passwords weren't cracked until mid 2019, the account password could still have been changed by knowing the username and email, then having access to the email to confirm the change. I await for the Admin's reply.

[LevinSnakesRise]

Jsaifie the game account was created on February 13, 2016. The forum account was created and the password change took place on January 05, 2019, 6 minutes after the forum account was activated. (Hence your 'welcome' email.)
I see another password change on the 13th, however this account has not at any point been confirmed as compromised, as we had an extensive list of users who were compromised, and this account has not been on that list at any point.

You will need to PM TurdPile and continue this with him, then re-post an Appeal once this has been resolved. You may contact him below;
ucp.php?i=pm&mode=compose&username_list=TurdPile

Be sure to include this Appeal in your message so that he may have reference to this incident. Until then, this appeal has to be on hold.

Thanks.