Mobile authenticators to stop cheating
Title says it all basically. Adding mobile authenticators would be very beneficial for the game. Currently a banned player will just create a new account and get right back to cheating. With mobile a...
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This thread is severely mis-informed.
2nd factor authentication is about securing your account against theft, not preventing cheating.
For example, Blizzard hand never and will never *require* 2nd factor to play a game. The mobile authenticator also does *not* give them the ability to ban a specific cellular device. You can reinitialize it with a new code on the same mobile device anytime you like.
CS:GO does have a feature called "Prime Status", where users participate in a Prime Matching Queue. However, many users believe Valve ruined the concept by allowing free users to earn Prime Status by reaching level 21 (and attaching a phone number). Users would have preferred if only users who purchased CS:GO would get prime status, because it would be a better detriment to cheaters to have a financial penalty for an account ban.
@Kuro466 You are sadly miss informed. I have friends banned from Blizzard games and they can no longer use the same mobile number as an authenticator for the account. Btw depends how each company uses the authenticator. Blizzard just notifies you when someone logs in with your account and when that happens it sends you a secure code to log into the game (that is how it works now in 2019) but it did not work the same way back in 2012 when they heavily promoted it.
R6S has an authenticator that does not allow you to even login to the account unless you type the code they send you in text message to your mobile. That authenticator literally will block the whole mobile if you cheat (the DEVICE NOT JUST THE NUMBER). That is why when you apply for it they explain it very clearly that in case of theft you have to use 4 specific codes and send them in the exact order you received them to an email address (along with other form of identification) in order to "release" your mobile device from their logs so that you can be able to re-use the same service and play the game. They keep the IMEI of the phone on their servers, not just the number.
CS:GO Prime did reduce the cheaters, because cheaters do not use mobile number to authenticate the account, because if they get banned they also ban their mobile number and device along with their email etc.
It is different for every company and depends how they use it, but it can be used 100% for reducing cheaters as it has been by Valve and R6S coming this year (2019). It is actually great at getting rid of noob script kiddies which are probably the majority of the cheaters anyways. That combined with hardware id bans, region lock and lawsuits against the cheaters will decrease the cheating dramatically.
Anything that reduces the cheating is better than doing nothing.
My R6 authenticator runs from my desktop so I don't even need a mobile phone.
@Cipax wrote:My R6 authenticator runs from my desktop so I don't even need a mobile phone.
And what are you saying. its free? Twilio sure isn't. what service do you use? ALot of them are ad spyware that ruin your pc too. Then we have to hear about you coming on here complaining your game is crashing. They can easily block the handful of popular ones with eac. Some of them you have to use every single day to keep it active. Some you need a phone just to register for them lol.
Most won't bother and will stop cheating.
@Karsot ...and what blizzard service do they stop you from using if you don't have a valid blizzard authenticator?
Both mobile numbers and IMEI (phone ID) can be changed and spoofed. Banning mobile numbers is a long term nightmare, because future customers get re-issued banned numbers. In theory this could happen with a spoofed IMEI also.
The most reliable and effective means of making a cheater ban effective is to make sure the account that's banned cost money, so their is a financial punishment for the ban. This means they need to put accounts that reach a minimum spend level into a "premium queue". Which unfortunately can be percieved as unfair to legitimate free-to-play players, but that's just the way it is.
@Kuro466 wrote:@Karsot ...and what blizzard service do they stop you from using if you don't have a valid blizzard authenticator?
Both mobile numbers and IMEI (phone ID) can be changed and spoofed. Banning mobile numbers is a long term nightmare, because future customers get re-issued banned numbers. In theory this could happen with a spoofed IMEI also.
The most reliable and effective means of making a cheater ban effective is to make sure the account that's banned cost money, so their is a financial punishment for the ban. This means they need to put accounts that reach a minimum spend level into a "premium queue". Which unfortunately can be percieved as unfair to legitimate free-to-play players, but that's just the way it is.
You must be young. Do you not remember how Russian spammers were ruining the internet with emails years ago before phone authentication? Spambots even seems to be a problem in this game. Can't convince me otherwise lol.
SO easy to change huh...lol Future customers get reissued banned numbers? With the same exact account information? no I don't think so.... ANd this doesn't seem to be a problem in games that use it. rainbow six, cs:go, apparenlty blizzard games, GOOGLE EMAIL!!! come on now. You guys seem scared they will implement this lol.
Is it perfect? of course not, nothing is, but its better then anything else. And makes a DRASTIC change.You cannot gift sub to others, you cannot gift store items to others, you cannot authenticate your account which leaves you exposed to the acocunt being stolen, you have to go through hell to change nicknames, paying method etc.
Sadly for you IMEI cannot be spoofed by the average user, that is why Police uses the IMEI to track down stolen devices once they connect to the network. The IMEI in order to be spoofed you need to have access to root in the android and i am 99% certain you cannot even access the root in Apple phones.Changing the IMEI number is illegal both in US and Europe and in China. That means all the areas this game is widely popular at. Changing the IMEI locks your SIM and notifies the network provider that you have changed the IMEI and then they can choose to call the police on you. You want a police squad with guns on your *? Be my guess change the IMEI, i will read on the news the rest of the story. Also which sane person will choose to commit a real crime by chaning the IMEI on their own in order to cheat in Apex?????
So it is a very effective method.The most effective way to stop cheating is to combine 3-4 methods against cheaters and right now the best methods are HWID ban, mobile authenticator, better anti-cheat program and lawsuit to poverty the cheaters.
Your proposal of the account costing moeny has been tested and has failed across all games. R6S had that and guess what? People were buying cheap accounts from China for less than 1 dollar and conitnued to cheat or people would get stolen accounts for cheap from cheating sites. One method alone does not work.
Finally friend you don't even know what IMEI is. IMEI = International Mobile Equipment Identity IMEI =/ = Device ID. Device ID is the name people see when searching for your device via BT in a network and can be changed from within the settings in any mobile phone. You might want to change the name of your phone from Samsung Galaxy to Blueberry or to Jack. Useually Device ID is created the first time the phone is "online" on a network. IMEI is created when the install your operating system on your phone while the phone is still in the factory it is being produced at.
The IMEI is how the provider and the satellites see your phone on the network. Too very different things.
@Karsot lol? you think cheaters are gifting sub to others? or concerned about their account being stolen?
It is illegal to spoof an IMEI -- on a cellular network, for the purpose of impersonating a device.. Cheaters can easily fire up an android emulator, put in any IMEI they want, connect it via normal internet, and it does not break any laws. Which means cheaters only have to convince the authenticator to run on an emulator and they can easily make as many IMEIs as they want.
And this is sidestepping the primary problem that few game companies want to "require" second-factor for their users if they fear it will have a chance of decreasing revenues.
In the end, it's really really hard to stop cheaters. Google just announced their Stadia game-streaming platform, and game streaming has some serious latency issues to tackle, so I'm doubtful it'll be successful. However, one big benefit is that when the client also runs in the cloud there is no way to install cheats. So maybe there is a far off future where we can get really low latency no-cheat gaming using game streaming.
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