I work in the IT industry but know next to nothing about Minecraft. I have a question about standard practices within the community if I may please?
My son was playing on a popular Minecraft server when someone accused him of cheating. He was asked by an admin to allow remote access to his machine via Anydesk to prove himself and was then banned from the serve for some infraction or other.
Looking at my son's machine I see the admin installed software to look in detail at running processes and so on and I shudder to think what else has been installed on there. I now consider the machine to be compromised and will be performing an OS wipe to make sure everything is OK.
My question is 'Is it normal for admins of community Minecraft servers to make this sort of request?'. I wouldn't give remote access to my machine to anyone for any reason and am astonished that he was asked to do so.
Best way to prove innocence is to look at ".minecraft" file to look for any stuff, that cheat client changed etc. Thats why anydesk is used, to look at that .minecraft file. If nothing out of ordinary is found, they unban that player. That one player can always watch what they are doing, they can stop it anytime.
I was part of admin team of a server with like 400 people online at the same time, and I was using anydesk for remote access to look for that too.
Just a note, this is just if player does not agree with a ban, not to every ban that someone had issued, and with that big amount of players cheating, it's impossible to not give ban for cheating by mistake.
I've never heard of this happening on a Minecraft server before, and I would never let any admin do this. Besides, it would be easy enough remove any incriminating evidence from the .minecraft folder before they got in to look, and then just put it back in afterward.
This is an absolutely horrible practice. If they ban you for not letting them remote into your machine, find another server to play on. This is asinine.
It's easy to just remove it, but its still easy to find about it Yeah, then there are people who don't want to do it -> that's why it's not pernemant, at least when I was doing it, so whoever don't want, just wait a bit.
I can agree that it is not good to do at all, but there was just no better thing to do Not big enough to have bans 100% accurate, not anything else to prove it's false ban.
Also, "If they ban you for not letting them remote into your machine" was absolutly not what I was doing. It was after already banning person when I or other member was like on 99% thinking it is cheating.
I don't think it is normal, it is an invasion of privacy at worst and just because someone is not letting somebody else access their computer doesn't automatically mean they are hiding something that is malicious. That would be like accusing someone of hiding piracy, just because they had a lot of mp3's on their phone or ipod but then decided to delete them for some unknown reason, or some other criminal offence, if people are not respecting innocent until proven guilty, we've got a bigger problem.
In a legal procedure where someone was being investigated and was told not to do X and Y for reasons of providing incriminating evidence in a court case, also known as obstruction of justice or perverting the course of justice, then this would count, if the police have a good reason to investigate someone they thought was likely committing a serious crime then the accused should give access to their computer at that point.
But anyone else outside of the family or is not a parent or legal guardian of their child, or who isn't an official tech support you requested to fix a problem on your PC? absolutely not. It is nobody else's business and there are privacy laws protecting our right to privacy.
With that said I would consider this practice highly suspicious, the act of asking someone for remote access to our computers because of allegations of cheating.
It is true that cheating ruins the experience for multiplayer gaming, but whether the gaming server host likes it or not, they have no business going into someone else's computer and potentially risking leaking sensitive information.
They do have a right to ban players if they think something dodgy is going on, though.
But for bans to be fair proof is needed, unfortunately Minecraft is not one of those games that keeps a video log of gameplay from start to finish of each session or every time a world is logged into and out again, I wished it were because then things like cheating or griefing could be proven without a doubt, without a livestream or having to bother with third party capturing apps, but then keeping video logs would take up too much space if it were to be added, such a feature should be optional. I would like this to happen so server admins have better control over what is going on.
I mean, theoretically world save files can get up to over a terabyte in size if enough of the world is explored,
having the option to video log gameplay of each player on the server for at least 6 months doesn't seem unreasonable, imo.
This would especially be doable if the game requested a separate hard drive for the video logging of at least 500gb, in 720p resolution 30fps.
Also, "If they ban you for not letting them remote into your machine" was absolutly not what I was doing. It was after already banning person when I or other member was like on 99% thinking it is cheating.
No no, I get it. I worded that wrong. You ban then for suspicion of cheating, which I totally get, then you refuse to lift the ban if they won't let you in to inspect their machine.
Never let some dude on the internet remote into your PC. Being a Minecraft server admin does not somehow make them trustworthy.
Find another server to play on.
Also, if some dude on the internet remoted into my child's PC without parental consent, I would be calling the FBI.
They do have a right to ban players if they think something dodgy is going on, though.
But for bans to be fair proof is needed, unfortunately Minecraft is not one of those games that keeps a video log of gameplay from start to finish of each session or every time a world is logged into and out again, I wished it were because then things like cheating or griefing could be proven without a doubt, without a livestream or having to bother with third party capturing apps, but then keeping video logs would take up too much space if it were to be added, such a feature should be optional. I would like this to happen so server admins have better control over what is going on.
Something like that would be amazing
Im not anymore there on server, but I would still be happy to hear anything else to do instead of this
Never let some dude on the internet remote into your PC. Being a Minecraft server admin does not somehow make them trustworthy.
Find another server to play on.
Also, if some dude on the internet remoted into my child's PC without parental consent, I would be calling the FBI.
At least in my country there is legaly no problem with it - as long as I don't do something in there (like installing virus, stealing anything etc.)
Also, I had some people saying it, then I just said "I totally understand, but saddly, there is no other way of proving it, so sorry for inconvience, you can wait for ban to expire or leave this server, have a nice day"
Im not anymore there on server, but I would still be happy to hear anything else to do instead of this
At least in my country there is legaly no problem with it - as long as I don't do something in there (like installing virus, stealing anything etc.)
Also, I had some people saying it, then I just said "I totally understand, but saddly, there is no other way of proving it, so sorry for inconvience, you can wait for ban to expire or leave this server, have a nice day"
I would like the surveillance mode in the game to be implemented in a better way, but technology just isn't there yet. And it would take far more hard drive space than even a 8 terabytes one to record even 2 full weeks worth of footage from 100 people on a Minecraft server. The video files would need to be in 30 frames a second and with a compression codec like H265 to make it work with just a dozen people for 6 months I'd imagine.
For each hour of video recorded at 720p isn't it like 0.9gb?
1 hour each day and you times that by 10, for playing for 1 hour, not 24 hours for each of the 10 days, that's 9gb used.
30 days of equivalent usage gets you up to 27gb in file size, times that by another 6 for the 6 months, it's almost 200gb.
Leaving a 200gb usable space buffer after the formatting is done on the 512gb hard drive.
In case someone else or yourself are slightly more addicted to Minecraft than your peers and stays on the server for longer each day,
so if the time limit is used up, or if the quota per player is reached, old files begin to get deleted automatically after newer ones are made.
So even with these heavily compressed videos the storage requirements would go up real quick.
But having a server application do this for 12 or less people with videos that are compressed, I don't see why Mojang can't do it.
As technology gets better though then in the future servers with this feature enabled could become mainstream.
At the moment this is a feature only high end servers would be able to take full advantage of without performance issues.
From an outsider's perspective, an owner of a server can ban anyone they want for any reason. It's their server. As some of you say, just find another server to play on.
This practice of some admins using anydesk to remote into a machine to check for cheating software is just plain dangerous. Its potentially worse than an invasion of privacy. If someone has remote access to your machine, even while you are watching, there is nothing stopping them from installing whatever they want. One could install something with an innocent name like 'Minecraft cheat checker' and the child watching thinks that its all normal but that software could have additional payloads such as keyloggers, viruses, webcam spy software and so on.
I am sure that the vast majority of admins are acting perfectly innocently when they use anydesk. However, it normalises what is an exceedingly dangerous practice. Indeed my son insisted, 'This is normal. Its what happens on Minecraft'. From a child safety point of view, I was horrified!
The machine my son was using has been wiped and we've had a chat about IT security and what the dangers are.
I want to confirm that this is creepy as hell. I've never heard of any moderator or even any minecrafter doing this, and it's disturbing. I'd recommend joining a realm instead of a server, as that kind of moderation is not existent and it's also just generally more fun:
Indeed my son insisted, 'This is normal. Its what happens on Minecraft'. From a child safety point of view, I was horrified!
It isn't normal though. I've been playing for eight years. I admin three servers, I routinely play on a number of others, this is the first time I've come across this practice.
Saddly, at least in my country (czech rep.) it is pretty normal... For example the biggest czech server -> (right now 3325 players) -> this is on their website (just translated it using chrome from czech to english -> photo
While this is a dangerous practice from an IT perspective I have heard of Hypixel or other tournaments doing this to YouTubers/widely known players who they suspect are cheating.
yep, bcs there is just no better way of proving cheats (that I know of) than just go ahead and look to .minecrart file. (and also some other ways, like winrar often told me someone used cheats etc.)
And at that to, the large majority of servers just want a nice apology or proof in a video of sorts to prove.
Or in the case of the largest, The Hypixel Network, Its solid proof, or a continued ban.
Well, getting solid proof from administrators is pretty good, but one problem is that, recording could be lagging on slower computers, and it could be difficult for administrators of these server too keep track of all bans (cheating is so common it would be pretty hard) Also on storage. When I was at the server, I recored just people that had VIP or there was problem with them before -> people more expected to ask for unban, as 90% of players don't do anything after ban. Even those records were big pretty soon, as recording take often pretty long time on some minigames.
This is not normal and should not be tolerated for any reason.
Never give someone remote access to your system at any time for any reason as doing so puts you and other users on your network at risk.
There is no room for debate, argument or justification and especially so when it involves children.
If a server admin or anyone asks for remote access to your machine you tell them to get lost. A server or admin team which pushes such a policy is not a server you should be playing on.
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Looks like someone ported over Discord Moderators to Minecraft and placed them in command of a server.
i'M eXpErIeNcEd At MoDeRaTiNg DiScOrD sErVeRs So I sHoUlD hAvE mOd On MiNeCrAfT
Yeah, that's not going to work.
Your son should absolutely NOT play on this server ever again, (not that he can). This is absolutely not safe, and I would recommend you do a full reset of his computer right now, because there is no telling what that admin installed on your son's PC. Alternatively, scan with an antivirus.
Looks like someone ported over Discord Moderators to Minecraft and placed them in command of a server.
i'M eXpErIeNcEd At MoDeRaTiNg DiScOrD sErVeRs So I sHoUlD hAvE mOd On MiNeCrAfT
Yeah, that's not going to work.
Your son should absolutely NOT play on this server ever again, (not that he can). This is absolutely not safe, and I would recommend you do a full reset of his computer right now, because there is no telling what that admin installed on your son's PC. Alternatively, scan with an antivirus.
I'd go further and recommend a full reinstall of the OS after reformatting the drive.
if he were my son I'd do the same to his or the family computer, and I'd have him use a guest account so there are more restrictions on what can or cannot be installed, with DNS tweaks to block certain sites etc. I wouldn't scold him for it, but I would educate him not to visit/use untrustworthy sources.
Hi everyone
I work in the IT industry but know next to nothing about Minecraft. I have a question about standard practices within the community if I may please?
My son was playing on a popular Minecraft server when someone accused him of cheating. He was asked by an admin to allow remote access to his machine via Anydesk to prove himself and was then banned from the serve for some infraction or other.
Looking at my son's machine I see the admin installed software to look in detail at running processes and so on and I shudder to think what else has been installed on there. I now consider the machine to be compromised and will be performing an OS wipe to make sure everything is OK.
My question is 'Is it normal for admins of community Minecraft servers to make this sort of request?'. I wouldn't give remote access to my machine to anyone for any reason and am astonished that he was asked to do so.
Cheers,
Mike
Best way to prove innocence is to look at ".minecraft" file to look for any stuff, that cheat client changed etc. Thats why anydesk is used, to look at that .minecraft file. If nothing out of ordinary is found, they unban that player. That one player can always watch what they are doing, they can stop it anytime.
I was part of admin team of a server with like 400 people online at the same time, and I was using anydesk for remote access to look for that too.
Just a note, this is just if player does not agree with a ban, not to every ban that someone had issued, and with that big amount of players cheating, it's impossible to not give ban for cheating by mistake.
I've never heard of this happening on a Minecraft server before, and I would never let any admin do this. Besides, it would be easy enough remove any incriminating evidence from the .minecraft folder before they got in to look, and then just put it back in afterward.
This is an absolutely horrible practice. If they ban you for not letting them remote into your machine, find another server to play on. This is asinine.
It's easy to just remove it, but its still easy to find about it Yeah, then there are people who don't want to do it -> that's why it's not pernemant, at least when I was doing it, so whoever don't want, just wait a bit.
I can agree that it is not good to do at all, but there was just no better thing to do Not big enough to have bans 100% accurate, not anything else to prove it's false ban.
Also, "If they ban you for not letting them remote into your machine" was absolutly not what I was doing. It was after already banning person when I or other member was like on 99% thinking it is cheating.
I don't think it is normal, it is an invasion of privacy at worst and just because someone is not letting somebody else access their computer doesn't automatically mean they are hiding something that is malicious. That would be like accusing someone of hiding piracy, just because they had a lot of mp3's on their phone or ipod but then decided to delete them for some unknown reason, or some other criminal offence, if people are not respecting innocent until proven guilty, we've got a bigger problem.
In a legal procedure where someone was being investigated and was told not to do X and Y for reasons of providing incriminating evidence in a court case, also known as obstruction of justice or perverting the course of justice, then this would count, if the police have a good reason to investigate someone they thought was likely committing a serious crime then the accused should give access to their computer at that point.
But anyone else outside of the family or is not a parent or legal guardian of their child, or who isn't an official tech support you requested to fix a problem on your PC? absolutely not. It is nobody else's business and there are privacy laws protecting our right to privacy.
With that said I would consider this practice highly suspicious, the act of asking someone for remote access to our computers because of allegations of cheating.
It is true that cheating ruins the experience for multiplayer gaming, but whether the gaming server host likes it or not, they have no business going into someone else's computer and potentially risking leaking sensitive information.
They do have a right to ban players if they think something dodgy is going on, though.
But for bans to be fair proof is needed, unfortunately Minecraft is not one of those games that keeps a video log of gameplay from start to finish of each session or every time a world is logged into and out again, I wished it were because then things like cheating or griefing could be proven without a doubt, without a livestream or having to bother with third party capturing apps, but then keeping video logs would take up too much space if it were to be added, such a feature should be optional. I would like this to happen so server admins have better control over what is going on.
I mean, theoretically world save files can get up to over a terabyte in size if enough of the world is explored,
having the option to video log gameplay of each player on the server for at least 6 months doesn't seem unreasonable, imo.
This would especially be doable if the game requested a separate hard drive for the video logging of at least 500gb, in 720p resolution 30fps.
No no, I get it. I worded that wrong. You ban then for suspicion of cheating, which I totally get, then you refuse to lift the ban if they won't let you in to inspect their machine.
Never let some dude on the internet remote into your PC. Being a Minecraft server admin does not somehow make them trustworthy.
Find another server to play on.
Also, if some dude on the internet remoted into my child's PC without parental consent, I would be calling the FBI.
Something like that would be amazing
Im not anymore there on server, but I would still be happy to hear anything else to do instead of this
At least in my country there is legaly no problem with it - as long as I don't do something in there (like installing virus, stealing anything etc.)
Also, I had some people saying it, then I just said "I totally understand, but saddly, there is no other way of proving it, so sorry for inconvience, you can wait for ban to expire or leave this server, have a nice day"
I would like the surveillance mode in the game to be implemented in a better way, but technology just isn't there yet. And it would take far more hard drive space than even a 8 terabytes one to record even 2 full weeks worth of footage from 100 people on a Minecraft server. The video files would need to be in 30 frames a second and with a compression codec like H265 to make it work with just a dozen people for 6 months I'd imagine.
For each hour of video recorded at 720p isn't it like 0.9gb?
1 hour each day and you times that by 10, for playing for 1 hour, not 24 hours for each of the 10 days, that's 9gb used.
30 days of equivalent usage gets you up to 27gb in file size, times that by another 6 for the 6 months, it's almost 200gb.
Leaving a 200gb usable space buffer after the formatting is done on the 512gb hard drive.
In case someone else or yourself are slightly more addicted to Minecraft than your peers and stays on the server for longer each day,
so if the time limit is used up, or if the quota per player is reached, old files begin to get deleted automatically after newer ones are made.
So even with these heavily compressed videos the storage requirements would go up real quick.
But having a server application do this for 12 or less people with videos that are compressed, I don't see why Mojang can't do it.
As technology gets better though then in the future servers with this feature enabled could become mainstream.
At the moment this is a feature only high end servers would be able to take full advantage of without performance issues.
https://www.androidcentral.com/how-much-data-does-streaming-media-use
I've made a suggestion thread for this proposal, please in your own time join this and let me know your opinions.
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft/suggestions/3042195-minecraft-server-option-video-capture-for
Thanks everyone.
From an outsider's perspective, an owner of a server can ban anyone they want for any reason. It's their server. As some of you say, just find another server to play on.
This practice of some admins using anydesk to remote into a machine to check for cheating software is just plain dangerous. Its potentially worse than an invasion of privacy. If someone has remote access to your machine, even while you are watching, there is nothing stopping them from installing whatever they want. One could install something with an innocent name like 'Minecraft cheat checker' and the child watching thinks that its all normal but that software could have additional payloads such as keyloggers, viruses, webcam spy software and so on.
I am sure that the vast majority of admins are acting perfectly innocently when they use anydesk. However, it normalises what is an exceedingly dangerous practice. Indeed my son insisted, 'This is normal. Its what happens on Minecraft'. From a child safety point of view, I was horrified!
The machine my son was using has been wiped and we've had a chat about IT security and what the dangers are.
Thanks again,
Mike
I want to confirm that this is creepy as hell. I've never heard of any moderator or even any minecrafter doing this, and it's disturbing. I'd recommend joining a realm instead of a server, as that kind of moderation is not existent and it's also just generally more fun:
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft/multiplayer/realms
It isn't normal though. I've been playing for eight years. I admin three servers, I routinely play on a number of others, this is the first time I've come across this practice.
Saddly, at least in my country (czech rep.) it is pretty normal... For example the biggest czech server -> (right now 3325 players) -> this is on their website (just translated it using chrome from czech to english -> photo
While this is a dangerous practice from an IT perspective I have heard of Hypixel or other tournaments doing this to YouTubers/widely known players who they suspect are cheating.
yep, bcs there is just no better way of proving cheats (that I know of) than just go ahead and look to .minecrart file. (and also some other ways, like winrar often told me someone used cheats etc.)
it is dangerous a lot, but...
I wouldnt trust them, theres so many better ways to prove it than that.
And at that to, the large majority of servers just want a nice apology or proof in a video of sorts to prove.
Or in the case of the largest, The Hypixel Network, Its solid proof, or a continued ban.
This is not common practaice, though im not saying there doing it with bad intentions. But I wouldn't trust it.
Quick question too, what server was this?
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Can I ask for example of that? Proving that someone has not any cheats?
Well, getting solid proof from administrators is pretty good, but one problem is that, recording could be lagging on slower computers, and it could be difficult for administrators of these server too keep track of all bans (cheating is so common it would be pretty hard) Also on storage. When I was at the server, I recored just people that had VIP or there was problem with them before -> people more expected to ask for unban, as 90% of players don't do anything after ban. Even those records were big pretty soon, as recording take often pretty long time on some minigames.
This is not normal and should not be tolerated for any reason.
Never give someone remote access to your system at any time for any reason as doing so puts you and other users on your network at risk.
There is no room for debate, argument or justification and especially so when it involves children.
If a server admin or anyone asks for remote access to your machine you tell them to get lost. A server or admin team which pushes such a policy is not a server you should be playing on.
Looks like someone ported over Discord Moderators to Minecraft and placed them in command of a server.
i'M eXpErIeNcEd At MoDeRaTiNg DiScOrD sErVeRs So I sHoUlD hAvE mOd On MiNeCrAfT
Yeah, that's not going to work.
Your son should absolutely NOT play on this server ever again, (not that he can). This is absolutely not safe, and I would recommend you do a full reset of his computer right now, because there is no telling what that admin installed on your son's PC. Alternatively, scan with an antivirus.
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PC Specs: Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super, 16GB DDR4-2133, 512 GB Silicon Power SSD, 500W EVGA PSU
I'd go further and recommend a full reinstall of the OS after reformatting the drive.
if he were my son I'd do the same to his or the family computer, and I'd have him use a guest account so there are more restrictions on what can or cannot be installed, with DNS tweaks to block certain sites etc. I wouldn't scold him for it, but I would educate him not to visit/use untrustworthy sources.