The story so far......

[GRIM_DECAY]

Since the emergence of these initial ‘3mails of doom’, I have been trawling through this / other forums and spoken to friends in the scene community trying to find out basic commonalities that have resulted in us all receiving these threats.

I have noticed that there are many posts asking the same questions, saying the same things, and lots of: ‘I think this / I think that’. Also, in an effort to save some people having to trawl through pages of: ‘LOL , F*CK YOU $ONY!’ or ‘LOL, $ONY HAVE F*CKED YOU ALL!’ comments until you want to stick a carving knife into your own eye socket, I have collated the information I have found and hopefully this can be a focal point to root out the actual cause, and then possibly a solution can be found (if one exists).

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PROVE / DISPROVE ANY OF THE COMMENTS BELOW WITH FACTS – THE BELOW LIST IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS FURTHER EVIDENCE BECOMES AVAILABLE.

WHAT WE KNOW:

1. It is the PS3 MACHINE that gets flagged – NOT JUST USER ACCOUNTS. Too many comments proving this have been logged.

2. It is NOTHING TO DO WITH KILLZONE 3 – many people are receiving these mails who have never let the game anywhere near their PS3. However, whether it’s for with playing any games before release date, we’re not sure. Maybe you’ve had Deadspace 2, or MVC3?

3. It is NOT just a ‘blanket’ $ony email to everybody. They know who they’re sending it to. There are many confirmed reports from ‘100% legit’ 3.56 people who have not received any email. They’re safe – go figure.

4. It is NOT THE FAULT OF THE ‘F*CKPSN’ feature, or the CA24 (Although it probably hasn’t helped) – but too many people are getting the email who never got round to doing it. Me and a few mates were just about to try it when this kicked off, and we have received the 3mail of doom.

5. HOW MANY TIMES YOU HAVE LOGGED ON TO PSN. Once? Twice? Three times a lady? It doesn’t matter. Even if you logged on for 8 seconds for sh!ts and giggles, that seems to be enough. You’ll get flagged if you’re on the internet in any way whatsoever with your PS3 – logged on or not.

6. BOTH CFWs & DONGLES CAN GET YOU FLAGGED. I believe there are too many comments stating this to be bullsh!t.

7. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY WEBSITE YOU ARE A MEMBER OF. Take off your tinfoil hats, people. I have many friends & relatives who have received the 3Mod, yet have NEVER joined or commented on a PS3-hacking related website.
8. PS3NINJA DOES NOT HELP. Many reports coming in from people who use it religiously and have still gotten busted.

9. (NEW) DELETING HISTORY DIDN'T HELP. It was a good idea, but it now appears it raised more issues than it solved (Please see perspex' Comments below).

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW (but would like to find out):

1. EXACTLY HOW MUCH $ONY KNOWS before they’ve issued the 3Mod – I haven’t found a single piece of conclusive proof that it is anything other than logging on to PSN with a FW .56. Is it the Mac Address? IP? Processor serial? Who knows? (Well, $ony do obv)

2. WHAT THEY’RE GOING TO DO NEXT. Duh, but are these temp bans?, permanent bans?, or threats that they cannot actually carry out? Time will tell.

3. If it was down to the initial ‘DNS trick’. Now this could be proven / disproven soon enough, but I haven’t read anything conclusively that states that people who never used the initial DNS trick

4. WHY SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO BE GETTING AWAY WITH IT. Bullsh!t? luck? Ignorance? But there are many posts from people saying they’re still on PSN, have not received and email, and are playing on a ‘hacked to the @sshole’ system. More info is required.

5. WHETHER IT CAN BE FIXED. Because we’re still speculating as to how they’ve rumbled us, no-one yet knows how to fix it. Was it Linux? Homebrew? Backup Managers? However, If the XBOX can be unbanned, it can’t be beyond the realms of the imagination of scene people far cleverer than me to find a workaround.

Looks like we’d all better wait until it dies down and more info is out there. In the meantime, I wonder if a CFW 3.56 would fix this? And WHERE THE F*CK IS IT?

Hold on to your butts, people.

EDIT - Considering that we are doing this thread because we're trying to save people time and grief - Could I ask that you please try not to rise to, or reply to turkish's comments; it only clogs the thread up with comments that are not factual or benificial.

[seanfrankly]

Another important point is that you send Sony log files every time you boot your system. This is more than likely the method they've used to track jailbreak users.

[thebudman420-PSG]

I have a feeling it may be anyone who used geohot cfw as Sony has custody of his pc's they could easily find the info they need to start bans, I see people who got flagged but they used geohot and haven't logged in since several weeks ago, I see reports of people with broken consoles who also still got flagged and they have not worked for a few weeks,

I got my email, I used geohot when it first came out, i also had a backup running on geohot, i also then ran kmeaw firmware but later switched to waninkoko v2 and then back to kmeaw unnecessarily (waninkoko was more stable on my slim!) to use the dns bypass, I did use the two pc method involving charles and dnsmasq in linux in a virtual machine. I think all the firmware have something in common and that is what they are flagging.

I don't think they are actually flagging what you use inside the ps3, I think it is CFW itself they are flagging as i have seen people who are on CFW but don't have backup managers ect. I been reading hundreds around hundreds of post to try to put together a picture of what they are flagging and it could be more then one thing. I also noticed some people who got flagged on geohot CFW who never used the dns bypass! I'm thinking they are only going by if you ever ran any CFW as i see some people who had it a few weeks ago but when sony came out with 3.56 they updated and still got flagged even though they are back on the official firmware.

[thebudman420-PSG]

edit for some reason this site posted twice! Please fix?

[GRIM_DECAY]

Its not just related to geo's f/w. plenty of ppl went straight to kmeaw or wnin v1/v2. and have the same.
@the budman - delete your 2nd post yourslef, we cant.

[studioeng-PSG]

Very impressive write up there.

I have quite a confusing variation of events on this one, hopefully I can put nonsense into constructive.

I have 2 systems which have been jailbroken in some form. The first system was cleaned, as best I could (formatted, reset to factory, rebuilt etc etc) and OFW 3.55 was installed and used online, until the second system was 'upgraded' to Kmeaw's 3.55 CFW and connected via the DNS trick until that sadly stopped working.

Now, if you're still following; BOTH systems have two separate PSN accounts linked to them, so two different email addresses, however, I received a 3MoD but the girlfriend DID NOT!

After searching around in the gray matter that is my memory, I can vaguely remember that while the 1st system was Jailbroken, the girlfriends account was NOT used, only mine. Yet on the second system, both of us have logged in to PSN, again via the DNS trick up until it stopped working.

If I also remember correctly, the DNS trick wasn't used/needed on the 1st system, as it wasn't being used due to the 2nd system being in it's place.

So, the only thing I can deduce from this, is that the 1st system was the culprit, without the necessary 'protections' in place by devs, but like most on here, I can only guess and I'm expecting a few people to highlight my error.

Also, if you don't sign in, which email/PSN account is used to phone home?

[thebudman420-PSG]

While im at it im going to state what this means if you get banned, If you just bought 10 games even if they are offline games on psn and havn't yet downloaded them they magically just ripped your ass off because without psn you can't download the games you payed for and i doubt they will refund your money for the purchases. So basically they stole your money,

[thebudman420-PSG]

Its not just related to geo's f/w. plenty of ppl went straight to kmeaw or wnin v1/v2. and have the same.
@the budman - delete your 2nd post yourslef, we cant.

Thanks i didn't know i could do that. I have no idea what is going on but it seems it is all CFW users getting flagged weather you pirated games or not and they are just assuming you did, Another thing to note if you have one CFW and one OFW on the network it seems they are flagging them both regardless of hacks being on just one machine. It also seems like the info they are using is several weeks old as people getting flagged who already upgraded to official 3.56 a cpl weeks ago.

[perspex]

i'll tell you how this SHIT happened(we getting caught!!..sony mailing us that they found homebrew on our ps3)...see when kmeaw cfw 3.55 came out, all we wanted to do is, update to it and PLAY ONLINE!! but at that time wipe history and all these shit didnt exist....so that was when we got FLAGGED!! whatever you do guys dont log into psn now. Just lay low for sometime,....disconnect your ps3 from internet access also. And also when we wipe the history and turn on a game..only that game log goes to psn, so the next when we wipe history n turn on another game....the older game yesterday is wiped out...nd that is a sure sign you wiped ur history and which is not possible without using homebrew....many ways to get caught guys,,,,DONT LET INTO BLACKOPS ADDICTION.....YOU CAN DO IT...LAY LOW!!!

[thebudman420-PSG]

Well i see some creditable people say the bans are account bans!