I have been debating sharing my story with the Consentus family for awhile now due to the preconceived notions many have on this topic, but I have ultimately decided to go ahead and disclose it.

With a job that takes me all over the map for up to a month at a time and demands I work around 90 hours a week, I don't have much time for Runescape or Consentus these days. I'm quite sure I am just a name on the forums to you. Typically, I wake up, get ready, eat, travel to my work-site and stay there for 13 hours, travel back to my hotel or camp, work out and shower, eat and have a half hour of time to myself if I'm lucky. For the past four months, this has been my life. The most I'll do on Runescape is around 5 minutes of dailies, and then log out.


Early in December, I got promoted into a position in the field office which put me in front of a computer most of the day. I saw this as a splendid opportunity to participate in some sort of AFK activity while I worked. Seren stones were something I naturally leaned towards as I'd never have to move and only occasionally click. Opening my Microsoft surface (touchscreen laptop/tablet) with glee, I set up my window like so , turned off private and clan chat (since I obviously couldn't socialize like this), and went about my work. With me being on a touchscreen, I only had to physically tap on the stone whenever I noticed my mining animation had ceased and then go back to business. It had a negligible effect on my job, and I estimated I could earn over 50,000,000 xp per work trip. What's not to love?!

It was early in the second day of reveling in this multitasking opportunity when I was abruptly kicked to the login screen.  I thought nothing of it; I was on a new and unfamiliar network, so I naturally assumed it was a disconnection - until I tried to log back in.



Immediately I was in a complete state of shock. I felt no emotions.




I've never had to deal with any sort of ban appeals before, but I figured that if a ban was made in error, it certainly would be an easy process to rectify. I couldn't have been more wrong.




How was I supposed to plead innocent when I had no idea what I was being accused of in a world where you are unquestionably assumed to be guilty if you are accused at all? When did a "guilty until proven innocent" system become fair? I had no choice but to raise a fuss with the help of some friends.

I took to social media, with threads on reddit reaching #1 in a matter of hours, over 50 tweets to J-mods, online petitions, and of course, RSOF posts.




But no matter how plastered across the web my situation became, I never received any attention from Jagex. Countless other threads started showing up on reddit and the support flooded in.








Four days in, we finally received a response from a Jagex staff member on the CLF directed at my case.





I was stupefied, bewildered, perplexed - was this it? I had convinced myself all along that if only we could get the attention of a mod, that this would all be sorted out. Should I give up? If I ever was able to play Runescape again, would I even want to after being betrayed like this? I then came across a situation not unlike mine who had recieved the following response from Mod Infinity:



and then not even four hours later, he got a second response.



I could not give up.



Jagex even made an official response to the community regarding all of the false ban reports that were circling:


You can read it here: http://services.runescape.com/m=forum/forums.ws?14,15,968,65539489

Day 7: As per my daily ritual, after sending out more tweets and comments, I logged into my account settings on the Runescape website. But this time, something was different:



After countless hours of myself, good friends, and complete strangers pleading my innocence and being told time and time again that the ban was accurate, it was suddenly quashed. I received no message or response from Jagex on any website regarding their mistake and no compensation for everything I went through and the membership time I missed out on.

I want to thank Redtunnel, Lilly and all the others who supported me and aren't on these forums for believing in my honesty all throughout this experience. I may still be banned to this day if it weren't for you. To everyone else, never forget how volatile the status of your account is and never be too quick to assume someone is lying. There are proven flaws in the bot detection systems we take for granted every day - never become complacent.

This is extremely alarming! I'm very happy for your (unclear) success in unbanning your account. You're very lucky to have made enough of an impact on your clanmates that they would stick by you in a situation like this. I say lucky, but you really earned it. Enjoy 'Scaping and try not to get reported. 

Crazy. I remember seeing the post back then on my random trips to reddit.
Glad you got your account back. It's just crazy that they are so up tight on how they believe it is 100% surefire no possible way if you're banned by this it is true and there is no other solution. Obviously they need to look back into it

So glad you got it back this needs to be shown publicly to alert others also!

Wow, crazy. Well done all & welcome back.

It's great to see everyone coming together for you! Happy you got it back mate, it is ridiculous for them to all stand by the system when other mods infact admitted that the system is sometimes wrong..

Just need the same fuss kicked off for my reset (that got ignored, surprise) haha!

It's lovely to see the community coming together. I would have offered my support had I known this was going on, I apologise.

I'm really happy you got it back. Jagex really made a poor decision in banning you and you deserve compensation, at least for the missed membership days/weeks. Even worse that they keep quiet about their error... Welcome back mate, hope this wont happen to you again.

No theory can ever be considered 100% true. This is a foundation of all academia, and by default, that makes the Botwatch in a best case scenario extremely accurate, but not flawless. However, having an understanding of the nature of the elements that can be tracked without violating privacy laws (e.g. installing spyware on people's computers), you will realise that it's not *that* hard to evade detection. An empirical testiment to that would for example be the very apparent combat bots with no other stats trained and nearly 200m xp in that one cb stat. They have successfully evaded the system, and done so on a large scale.

Now, that only means the Botwatch does a poor job at detecting bots, but what about banning innocent players? Once again, the answer is that the system cannot be 100%, no matter how scrupulously designed. In the case of Botwatch, it's been empirically proven time and again that it has, in fact, flagged/banned innocent players. Tek is just one of many examples. This isn't necessarily an issue, because after all, it's unreasonable to expect that a system is perfect. The core issue is that Jagex treats the system as if it were perfect. Should the system flag you, whether it is accurate or not, you can't appeal the ban (officially). The only way to get unbanned is if you are lucky enough to get a j-mod's attention.  The fact that the system isn't 100% should be more than enough to substantiate appealability. Quite frankly, Jagex's willful ignorance is alarming.

As far as my trust in Tek goes, it's pretty safe to say that if you knew him half as well as I do, you wouldn't doubt that he is innocent, and that is without even looking at circumstancial evidence in his favour.

I can't believe you had to go through all that. I've always known their system is stupid, because I still continuously see bots around RS. But to falsely accuse someone and not giving them a chance to appeal? That's ridiculous and unfair. I'm glad it was eventually resolved, but still should not have taken this long, and you deserved to hear from them on why they decided to listen to your appeal, and compensate you for your membership days.

~Sean

Oh my, Nathan (mod infinity) got real sassy in his response it's quite funny to see them be proven wrong.

Glad to see that everything worked out.  I couldn't imagine how frustrating those circumstances would have been had it been me, just based on the frustration I felt  by only reading it. I don't have much to say on the topic other than what has already been said before me.  All I can say is that I hope Jagex can work out these holes in their system as best as possible and recognize holes well enough to have a backup plan for those mistakenly accused such as bringing back the ability to appeal.

Every person should know no system is 100% correct, ever. Fail on Jagex' part. Good to see it got squashed though.

I'm very happy for you that you got it back. I would have given up already and left rs forever.

If i knew this i would've supported you.

It's a damn big story and i liked to read it but felt bad for you as well.

Enjoy the game more than ever if you are able to

I'm very glad you managed to get the account back after this madness. It is ridiculous how they can do that to someone. Jagex just made themselves look really dumb. I respect you for standing up to them like that and not stopping the fight!

Also it made me smile how Consentus backed you up. THIS IS WHY I LOVE THIS CLAN!

Actually had something semi-similar happen to me as well. Was at the point on 07 where Jagex went in to certain areas of the game and said "Oh well most people in this area are bots so let's ban anyone here". And I was literally banned for cutting yews on 07. Haven't gone back to 07 since lol.  http://gyazo.com/586e35b73983268240637ea6c7053c79

Anyhow, I'm certainly happy you were able to recover your account after all of that crap you had to hurdle through. Hope you never have to go through any of this crap again.