Answers to "Why was I (or my friend) Banned in TC?"

[Michael]

It has come to our notice that recently, a few users who were banned from TC were claiming on other forums that they were banned without reason. Certain users even apparently went to the extent to claim that one could get banned anytime on TC for no reason whatsoever, without any warning. This is simply not true.

We respect every user who joins TC and wants to be a part of our online community, and banning someone is a last resort decision that we take only when all other measures including warnings fail, or in some cases when that user has broken a major forum rule in a wilful manner.

Genuine users were never banned.

I hope that after reading this post, everyone would understand that we never ban anyone at TC without a very good reason!

In most cases, the server sends an automated email to banned users letting them know the reason for their ban. Additionally, banned users, when they contacted any of the staff of TC, they always were told why they were banned (if the user did not already know the reason).

 

These are among the most common reasons why an user would have been banned at TC in the recent past:

1. MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS: A few users had created several accounts (to the tune of more than 150 accounts each) a few years ago when anyone could just register an account at TC with just an email account and a password without the need for an "invitation code."

The owners of such accounts started logging in randomly with one such DIFFERENT account every day as a "disposable account" to leech content off the forum and to commit other misdeeds, before discarding it. Many such duplicate accounts were removed by the system as and when their owners attempted to use them. The vast majority of recent bans were for these fake disposable accounts.

2. DATABASE CLEANUP: This was already announced by the other staff of TC a few months ago that a member cleanup was going to be done and that inactive accounts were likely to be purged. Accordingly, accounts of users who joined the forum but never contributed anything at all to the forum for 1-2 years (or more) were also removed by the system. So if you registered in the forum but returned after 2 years and then found your account removed, then you only have yourself to blame...

3. CHRONIC SPAMMERS and LEECHERS: Users who chronically (chronically means for months or years) post spam and/or leech without giving back anything to community would find their rank demoted to SPAMMER and/or LAZY respectively. (In this context, "thank you" posts are considered as spam as per the forum rules). If they do not take any further constructive action to amend their behavior in the forum, then they would eventually find themselves removed from the community. The decision to ban such members would in most cases be a joint one taken by all the forum admins and co-admins after an internal discussion.

4. SERIOUS HOSTILE ACTIVITY: Users found to be attempting to hack and/or attack the forum in any way will naturally get banned. This will be done only after careful confirmation and discussion among all the forum staff. No member is banned based on just speculation without proof. So far, we needed to ban only one person due to this reason.

5. IMPERSONATION: A few users take on the nicknames of famous crackers from the past and/or claim to be a member of a now-dead but once-glorious cracking team from the past and claim to be them, when in reality they are not. Naturally such people would get banned once we have confirmatory evidence of their impersonation. Fortunately this is also quite rare at TC but we did have 2 cases so far where we needed to ban the impersonators in the past 2 years.

6. LEAKERS: Leaking content out of TC is a serious violation of our forum rules and users found to be sharing our private content on other platforms including on Telegram are liable to get banned.

The main reasons for users getting banned from TC in the recent past have been described above. So if you or any of your friends have been banned in the recent past (past several months) they would in all likelihood, be belonging to one of the categories above.  (Anyone found to be violating any of the major forum rules, apart from the categories mentioned above) are also liable to get banned, of course.

I have used the Google Translator to translate most of the above content from my language to English. I think that the translator did a good job. If there are any major mistakes with the wordings or sentences you can let me know and I will correct them.