Is there any way that alternate accounts can be detected automatically?

[hotdogPi]

It makes sense that it if an account is banned, any alternate accounts created afterwards should be banned too, but this seems hard to implement.

Some ideas:

• Time between old account being banned and new account being created
  
• Similarity of friends list, especially if the old banned account and new account are friends
  
• Similarity of username(s), including previous ones
  
• While you can change your location very easily, I figure that some players wouldn't bother to change it at all, or they would try to trick the system by using a slightly different, but still close, location, so this could also be taken into account.
  
• If the old account and the new account speak primarily in a different language, it's almost definitely not an alternate account.
  
• Games in common, placing more weight on the game that got the first account banned and on obscure games that very few people would have, while placing less weight on others, and very little weight on games that haven't been played in months or years
  
• Amount of money spent: If the new account has spent more than $100-$200 or so, it probably isn't a throwaway cheat account, especially if the old account didn't have that much spent.
  
• Which hours of the day and days of the week the user is online (Valve would start needing to keep track of that for each user)

You cannot get someone else banned for your actions. An account can only be banned if it is created AFTER the old one gets banned, or else people would be able to intentionally ban others by creating similarities to other users and then cheating.

VAC bans caused by similarities to previous accounts would be explained to the banned player just like phone number sharing is, but what caused the similarity will NOT be explained. Bans caused by similarities would be able to be removed by Steam Support, unlike other types.

Even if the false positive rate was 10^-15, this should still catch some players.

[Snaggle]

VAC will only ban an account that was used to cheat or that was linked to an account cheating at the time the ban is issued.

VAC is not about banning actual users and people are free to make their own accounts and play again. This will never change.

[[GW] Darling]

You could ban a computer but there's no other way to do it

[[GW] Darling]

MAC address

[RockStar]

A mac address can be change very easily, same with ip's.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by hotdogPi:

It makes sense that it if an account is banned, any alternate accounts created afterwards should be banned too, but this seems hard to implement.

Some ideas:

• Time between old account being banned and new account being created
  
• Similarity of friends list, especially if the old banned account and new account are friends
  
• Similarity of username(s), including previous ones
  
• While you can change your location very easily, I figure that some players wouldn't bother to change it at all, or they would try to trick the system by using a slightly different, but still close, location, so this could also be taken into account.
  
• If the old account and the new account speak primarily in a different language, it's almost definitely not an alternate account.
  
• Games in common, placing more weight on the game that got the first account banned and on obscure games that very few people would have, while placing less weight on others, and very little weight on games that haven't been played in months or years
  
• Amount of money spent: If the new account has spent more than $100-$200 or so, it probably isn't a throwaway cheat account, especially if the old account didn't have that much spent.
  
• Which hours of the day and days of the week the user is online (Valve would start needing to keep track of that for each user)

You cannot get someone else banned for your actions. An account can only be banned if it is created AFTER the old one gets banned, or else people would be able to intentionally ban others by creating similarities to other users and then cheating.

VAC bans caused by similarities to previous accounts would be explained to the banned player just like phone number sharing is, but what caused the similarity will NOT be explained. Bans caused by similarities would be able to be removed by Steam Support, unlike other types.

Even if the false positive rate was 10^-15, this should still catch some players.

Well, to start on that list

-How is time going to determine anything? A person that was banned could create an account 2 minutes after or 2 weeks after
-A fried of the person banned happens to be mutual friends with the others and creates an account. By your logic, they should be banned
-How would a slightly different location be taken into account? "Well, as you can see her, this person lived in (insert city/town), were banned, and a new account appeared in that same city/town. it HAS to be an alt account, ban it !" You can see how that will go wrong
-Similarity between usernames. Have you not seen the topics on here where people complain about people having usernames that they want? hell, have you not paid attention to the hundreds of pewdiepies that are floating around out there? And that's just ONE username that is used frequently, and you want to ban others simply because of that?
-Right, language switch is a sure fire way to tell that the person isn't the same. Just the same as slapping a fake mustache on your face makes you someone else.
-Placing weight on most played game? Meaning that if someone were banned in a popular game (csgo for example), a new account having said popular game is an indicator of.....?
-In what way, shape, or form would their steam wallet determine if it's a throwaway account? I haven't had money on my steam wallet for quite some time, yet some would consider that a throwaway account.

[ReBoot]

Heuristics are inherently flawed. Plus, secondary accounts are already punished, phone number.

[NotSoBad]

Not again on of this threads.....