Kyle banned Colosal's SE forum and game accounts
Jun 3, 2014 6:35:30 GMT
Post by Raphael Majere on Jun 3, 2014 6:35:30 GMT
Update: Colly's accounts unbanned
The janitor is here to clean up the mess.
Please open your mind, ears and eyes before reading on.
I believe some damages can be restored and it's important to provide facts and information to clear up the air. Because I had observed the entire process from the start and also encouraged some actions, it's my intention to identify how some key actions occurred and resulted in most of us now being able to see the a little of the "light at the end of the tunnel".
Firstly, my IMHO, both Kyle and Colly had made critical mistakes in their actions and inactions (i.e. not doing something which they should have done).
Secondly, to state very clearly from the start, whenever shit like this happens to the Guild, the Guild Guardians' first role is to find out the truth. Because BP is not going to go to war with anyone/guild without knowing what we are fighting for. Those accusations that the guardians are not doing anything to support Colly is totally uncalled for. People get emotional, yes, but acting on the whims of emotions is pathetic. We are not grade school kids.
I will put it out clearly now, based on what I have seen in the last 12 hours: I am pretty sure Colly is not the hacker. This is my personal view. (This does not mean that colly is totally not at fault. @colly, sorry colly, but this is truly what I feel)
Take a little sidetrack: suppose on day 1 of the ban, colly informed entire bp about the matter and the entire guild goes up in flames, grab out pitchforks and axes and starts attacking Kyle/Wulven at SE forums and lamblasting Kyle without finding out the truth. Imagine a scenario whereby Colly is indeed the hacker and he was lying to us, can you imagine what will happen if Kyle starts putting out credible evidences that colly did hack and cheat, and suddenly colly admits he did it and disappears. Can you imagine how silly all of us and the entire BP will look?
Thankfully, that did not happen.
Let me start the story by sharing a pm I sent to colly shortly after the ban occured:
"firstly, there is no doubt that you are BP's biggest contributor in my books. Even more than pete, me or any of the previous leaders. of course, we are not comparing here but i just want to let you know what I feel."
I think all of us have a lot of nice things to say regarding colosal's collosal contributions and it will fill pages.
The case started with this PM from Kyle to colly:
"Your account was found to have been funded by several other accounts that hacked IAP to illegally get shadow crystals. As a result, these accounts as well as the BP Colosal have been banned pending a full investigation, and any of this sc you have further transferred on to guild members will be revoked.
We take fraud very seriously and our policies on this matter have been the same for everyone."
Subsequently, Colly game accounts were banned so was his SE forum account.
Kyle was able to trace the hacker's IP address and it's the very same one that is used for colly (+ his brother)'s game accounts and colly's SE forum account. (This is according to Pete's Skype exchange with Kyle himself ; bp members can access more on this in members section)
Colly himself posted this 6 hrs ago; when he had regained his SE forum access and SE game accounts:
PM from Kyle to Colly:
"As an update to the investigation, we have IP address logs connecting you to the Chino Caneo account beyond a reasonable doubt. We log all IPs of players at every login and purchase, so it is trivial for us to check for alt accounts, even when multiple platforms are used. Below is a small sample of this login data:
User id IP Date Version Platform
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:55:25 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:53:32 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:49:46 2.82 Web
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 12:01:06 2.82 PC
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 12:00:59 2.82 PC
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:10:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:05:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:00:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 21:55:52 2.82 Web
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:08:15 2.82 PC
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:08:07 2.82 PC
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:07:39 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:05:07 2.82 Web
780087 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 07:33:18 2.82 Android
780087 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 07:33:09 2.82 Android
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-19 21:47:21 2.82 PC
779907 = BP Colosal
2888991 = Chino Caneo
780087 = RedPyramid
Similarily, BP emoce, killmefirst, Densus88 can also be linked back to you through IP address matching. Since there is obvious evidence of IAP hacking on these accounts, and all fed into the BP Colosal account which is also matched by IP, the investigation has concluded and your game and forum accounts have been banned permanently. I stopped short of submitting the evidence to your local authorities under charges of digital fraud, trafficking in stolen goods, etc but you get the point."
Let's take a short recess: If you are Kyle and this is what you see, what would you have done? I would do what Kyle did. Ban first, talk later. Because he has no idea how much more damage the hacker can do, what if he issues a million SCs to every player on the server and everyone bought cards, can you imagine the sheer amount of work to check every account and delete illegally added cards?
I am not defending Kyle here. I do think there are some lapses on communications on his part and his investigations was not thoroughly completed. He's probably going to cite that he has no time and that being a accessory to the crime is already reason enough to ban someone. (Basically what Vyz said)
Let's assume that Colly is not the hacker (which imo, I have already stated earlier, based on the updates from in the last 12 hours, i believe colly's story) and that Emoce is the real hacker.
(Yes, if you have received any SCs from BP Emoce, please check that your account is NOT banned! And please do not accept any free SCs from him! He is likely to be the hacker that caused all these problems for colly!)
Moving on, since I have already torched Kyle a bit, I have to talk about colly.
All in all, unless I am mistaken, Emoce hacked the server twice using colly's "Chino Caneo" game account. I have not sure how he did it, but he was able to hack using Colly's IP: which led to Kyle believing that BP Emoce = Colly, and hence the bans. According to colly, there was a 20K SC transfer the first time and around 18K the second time. The first hack was not discovered yet, the second hack was discovered and Kyle took action. According to Kyle, he said the amount of SCs hacked was in the region of 'hundreds of dollars' - so again, there is some inconsistencies there, nonetheless, for the story, let's just accept that the amount of SCs was not a small one.
The escalation point in the entire case came with Colly indicated that he wanted to leave BP. That immediately rang the alarm within me and some of the guardians. "WTF? If you are innocent, go and fight Kyle all the way to the end! The BP guild is behind you, the guardians will help you, what's the fcuking worse thing that can happen? The entire BP leaves SE in disgust and closes down? So be it. If Kyle can single-handly wrongly accuse someone of hacking and banning game accounts, how will I feel safe with my purchases?"
Colly's inactions and unwillingness to bring the fight to Kyle was strange and out of character. He was fighting for BP's honor and superb performances in tourneys in year 2013 and 2014 - and suddenlly when he is falsely accused and his game and se forum accounts are banned and he decides to do nothing. Huh?!
I will be honest here, colly's posts regarding the matter were questionable. (Pupils and members can read them here: wotbp.proboards.com/post/104709/thread) This further trigger questions within the guardians. Don't blame the guardians: they want to DO THE RIGHT THING and going to war based on single side of the story without checking Kyle's side of the story is NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Moving on:
I have an idea why colly was eager to leave BP but I won't elaborate further. It's his choice if he wants to tell us all why he decided to back down and not contest Kyle.
It is very likely that Colly has emailed Kyle very recently - Colly has initially wanted me to forward an email that he has written to Kyle explaining why he is NOT the hacker - I am not going to share the contents, of course. And I told Colly to email Kyle directly: there is no need to go through me. I provided Kyle's email to colly and it's likely that Kyle read that email and resulted in Kyle has lifting the game bans on colly's accounts. (I am not sure if he unbanned all the accounts) And Colly's SE forum account is also unbanned.
(However, a reasonable restriction was placed on Colly's main game account for his involvement in the illegal usage of SCs, this is not unexpected or unreasonable since Colly did spend the SCs on internal tourneys and other things. Yes, the guardians and I am sure many BPs would love to help colly out)
With all due respect to colly, he made a few critical wrong decisions.
1. When the incident happened, it's essentially a private matter between him (a customer) and the seller (wulven) - a player's accounts are banned and he needs to find out why. Contact the seller and find the resolution.
While a guild DOES NOT NEED to be involved in the matter, the guild can help to mediate and negotiate on behalf of colly, but the guild and its leaders need to know the truth. What eventually happened was a totally Unnecessary, blown-out-of-proportions drama with members accusing each other. When colly formally deleted his BP forum account (which I have totally no idea why he'll want to do that), the drama got blown even bigger and members got emotional.
2. Colly sent the email 'too late' to Kyle. Apparently, the 'magic' email solved all the problems and got Colly's stuff unbanned. Why is the email sent so late and not on day 1 of the ban? You'll have to ask colly.
Lastly, while I love colly and respect him and we ALL owe him a lot for all the contributions to BP and SE community, with upmost respect I have to say this: He chose and made his decisions on his own. No one was pressuring him to leave BP or for that matter, throw dirt at the guardians. As a former guardian, he should know perfectly, the process the guardians have to take. It's really not that hard to figure out the guardians: It's just trying to take the path of "DO the right thing". It's just what all of you do daily.
And also, nobody likes to do stuff like this. Everyone, including the guardians, joins BP because they want to enjoy a game guild, to enjoy the game further by being part of a clan. The guardians volunteer their time and effort to make things better for everyone. The guardians hopes and want to embody and spread this spirit: when every member puts in their own effort to make BP better, the effect is a multiplier one, everyone is happier and BP grows and becomes a badge every member is proud to wear on their chest.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I might have left out some details in the case that are important and I will be adding stuff if I think they are important details. All guardians are free to edit any parts of the above, of course. There is no need to ask for my permission.
And yes, if anyone has any questions, please ask. Do take note that this is a PUBLIC post and be responsible for what you post (duh). While this is usually an in-house matter that we usually discuss indoors, the case is widely known and already publicably discussed, it makes perfect sense to close the matter in the public air.
(As a side point, the rest of the SE guilds will be informed about being wary of BP Emoce and not to deal with him)
The janitor is here to clean up the mess.
Please open your mind, ears and eyes before reading on.
I believe some damages can be restored and it's important to provide facts and information to clear up the air. Because I had observed the entire process from the start and also encouraged some actions, it's my intention to identify how some key actions occurred and resulted in most of us now being able to see the a little of the "light at the end of the tunnel".
Firstly, my IMHO, both Kyle and Colly had made critical mistakes in their actions and inactions (i.e. not doing something which they should have done).
Secondly, to state very clearly from the start, whenever shit like this happens to the Guild, the Guild Guardians' first role is to find out the truth. Because BP is not going to go to war with anyone/guild without knowing what we are fighting for. Those accusations that the guardians are not doing anything to support Colly is totally uncalled for. People get emotional, yes, but acting on the whims of emotions is pathetic. We are not grade school kids.
I will put it out clearly now, based on what I have seen in the last 12 hours: I am pretty sure Colly is not the hacker. This is my personal view. (This does not mean that colly is totally not at fault. @colly, sorry colly, but this is truly what I feel)
Take a little sidetrack: suppose on day 1 of the ban, colly informed entire bp about the matter and the entire guild goes up in flames, grab out pitchforks and axes and starts attacking Kyle/Wulven at SE forums and lamblasting Kyle without finding out the truth. Imagine a scenario whereby Colly is indeed the hacker and he was lying to us, can you imagine what will happen if Kyle starts putting out credible evidences that colly did hack and cheat, and suddenly colly admits he did it and disappears. Can you imagine how silly all of us and the entire BP will look?
Thankfully, that did not happen.
Let me start the story by sharing a pm I sent to colly shortly after the ban occured:
"firstly, there is no doubt that you are BP's biggest contributor in my books. Even more than pete, me or any of the previous leaders. of course, we are not comparing here but i just want to let you know what I feel."
I think all of us have a lot of nice things to say regarding colosal's collosal contributions and it will fill pages.
The case started with this PM from Kyle to colly:
"Your account was found to have been funded by several other accounts that hacked IAP to illegally get shadow crystals. As a result, these accounts as well as the BP Colosal have been banned pending a full investigation, and any of this sc you have further transferred on to guild members will be revoked.
We take fraud very seriously and our policies on this matter have been the same for everyone."
Subsequently, Colly game accounts were banned so was his SE forum account.
Kyle was able to trace the hacker's IP address and it's the very same one that is used for colly (+ his brother)'s game accounts and colly's SE forum account. (This is according to Pete's Skype exchange with Kyle himself ; bp members can access more on this in members section)
Colly himself posted this 6 hrs ago; when he had regained his SE forum access and SE game accounts:
PM from Kyle to Colly:
"As an update to the investigation, we have IP address logs connecting you to the Chino Caneo account beyond a reasonable doubt. We log all IPs of players at every login and purchase, so it is trivial for us to check for alt accounts, even when multiple platforms are used. Below is a small sample of this login data:
User id IP Date Version Platform
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:55:25 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:53:32 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 13:49:46 2.82 Web
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 12:01:06 2.82 PC
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-21 12:00:59 2.82 PC
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:10:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:05:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 22:00:52 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 21:55:52 2.82 Web
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:08:15 2.82 PC
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:08:07 2.82 PC
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:07:39 2.82 Web
779907 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 19:05:07 2.82 Web
780087 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 07:33:18 2.82 Android
780087 186.23.42.35 2014-05-20 07:33:09 2.82 Android
2888991 186.23.42.35 2014-05-19 21:47:21 2.82 PC
779907 = BP Colosal
2888991 = Chino Caneo
780087 = RedPyramid
Similarily, BP emoce, killmefirst, Densus88 can also be linked back to you through IP address matching. Since there is obvious evidence of IAP hacking on these accounts, and all fed into the BP Colosal account which is also matched by IP, the investigation has concluded and your game and forum accounts have been banned permanently. I stopped short of submitting the evidence to your local authorities under charges of digital fraud, trafficking in stolen goods, etc but you get the point."
Let's take a short recess: If you are Kyle and this is what you see, what would you have done? I would do what Kyle did. Ban first, talk later. Because he has no idea how much more damage the hacker can do, what if he issues a million SCs to every player on the server and everyone bought cards, can you imagine the sheer amount of work to check every account and delete illegally added cards?
I am not defending Kyle here. I do think there are some lapses on communications on his part and his investigations was not thoroughly completed. He's probably going to cite that he has no time and that being a accessory to the crime is already reason enough to ban someone. (Basically what Vyz said)
Let's assume that Colly is not the hacker (which imo, I have already stated earlier, based on the updates from in the last 12 hours, i believe colly's story) and that Emoce is the real hacker.
(Yes, if you have received any SCs from BP Emoce, please check that your account is NOT banned! And please do not accept any free SCs from him! He is likely to be the hacker that caused all these problems for colly!)
Moving on, since I have already torched Kyle a bit, I have to talk about colly.
All in all, unless I am mistaken, Emoce hacked the server twice using colly's "Chino Caneo" game account. I have not sure how he did it, but he was able to hack using Colly's IP: which led to Kyle believing that BP Emoce = Colly, and hence the bans. According to colly, there was a 20K SC transfer the first time and around 18K the second time. The first hack was not discovered yet, the second hack was discovered and Kyle took action. According to Kyle, he said the amount of SCs hacked was in the region of 'hundreds of dollars' - so again, there is some inconsistencies there, nonetheless, for the story, let's just accept that the amount of SCs was not a small one.
The escalation point in the entire case came with Colly indicated that he wanted to leave BP. That immediately rang the alarm within me and some of the guardians. "WTF? If you are innocent, go and fight Kyle all the way to the end! The BP guild is behind you, the guardians will help you, what's the fcuking worse thing that can happen? The entire BP leaves SE in disgust and closes down? So be it. If Kyle can single-handly wrongly accuse someone of hacking and banning game accounts, how will I feel safe with my purchases?"
Colly's inactions and unwillingness to bring the fight to Kyle was strange and out of character. He was fighting for BP's honor and superb performances in tourneys in year 2013 and 2014 - and suddenlly when he is falsely accused and his game and se forum accounts are banned and he decides to do nothing. Huh?!
I will be honest here, colly's posts regarding the matter were questionable. (Pupils and members can read them here: wotbp.proboards.com/post/104709/thread) This further trigger questions within the guardians. Don't blame the guardians: they want to DO THE RIGHT THING and going to war based on single side of the story without checking Kyle's side of the story is NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO.
Moving on:
I have an idea why colly was eager to leave BP but I won't elaborate further. It's his choice if he wants to tell us all why he decided to back down and not contest Kyle.
It is very likely that Colly has emailed Kyle very recently - Colly has initially wanted me to forward an email that he has written to Kyle explaining why he is NOT the hacker - I am not going to share the contents, of course. And I told Colly to email Kyle directly: there is no need to go through me. I provided Kyle's email to colly and it's likely that Kyle read that email and resulted in Kyle has lifting the game bans on colly's accounts. (I am not sure if he unbanned all the accounts) And Colly's SE forum account is also unbanned.
(However, a reasonable restriction was placed on Colly's main game account for his involvement in the illegal usage of SCs, this is not unexpected or unreasonable since Colly did spend the SCs on internal tourneys and other things. Yes, the guardians and I am sure many BPs would love to help colly out)
With all due respect to colly, he made a few critical wrong decisions.
1. When the incident happened, it's essentially a private matter between him (a customer) and the seller (wulven) - a player's accounts are banned and he needs to find out why. Contact the seller and find the resolution.
While a guild DOES NOT NEED to be involved in the matter, the guild can help to mediate and negotiate on behalf of colly, but the guild and its leaders need to know the truth. What eventually happened was a totally Unnecessary, blown-out-of-proportions drama with members accusing each other. When colly formally deleted his BP forum account (which I have totally no idea why he'll want to do that), the drama got blown even bigger and members got emotional.
2. Colly sent the email 'too late' to Kyle. Apparently, the 'magic' email solved all the problems and got Colly's stuff unbanned. Why is the email sent so late and not on day 1 of the ban? You'll have to ask colly.
Lastly, while I love colly and respect him and we ALL owe him a lot for all the contributions to BP and SE community, with upmost respect I have to say this: He chose and made his decisions on his own. No one was pressuring him to leave BP or for that matter, throw dirt at the guardians. As a former guardian, he should know perfectly, the process the guardians have to take. It's really not that hard to figure out the guardians: It's just trying to take the path of "DO the right thing". It's just what all of you do daily.
And also, nobody likes to do stuff like this. Everyone, including the guardians, joins BP because they want to enjoy a game guild, to enjoy the game further by being part of a clan. The guardians volunteer their time and effort to make things better for everyone. The guardians hopes and want to embody and spread this spirit: when every member puts in their own effort to make BP better, the effect is a multiplier one, everyone is happier and BP grows and becomes a badge every member is proud to wear on their chest.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I might have left out some details in the case that are important and I will be adding stuff if I think they are important details. All guardians are free to edit any parts of the above, of course. There is no need to ask for my permission.
And yes, if anyone has any questions, please ask. Do take note that this is a PUBLIC post and be responsible for what you post (duh). While this is usually an in-house matter that we usually discuss indoors, the case is widely known and already publicably discussed, it makes perfect sense to close the matter in the public air.
(As a side point, the rest of the SE guilds will be informed about being wary of BP Emoce and not to deal with him)