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That is why this is clearly a technical and honest mistake.
I don't see how this is "clearly" anything. Apart from
a post in late 2008 bragging about how they'd automated much of their anti-RMT countermeasures, we have no idea whatsoever how they go about sorting the RMT from the legit players from their POV. I've been in enough bureaucratic organizations in my life to know that bad direction can result in human beings making otherwise incomprehensibly bad decisions.
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This is like Swine Flu. People are paranoid about it, it is all over the news... but is eh.... nothing more worse than just a simple flu. The misbanning, even it sucks, is far from terrible than it is actually perceived, and will get addressed in time.
I wish I had your faith in an anonymous, secretive, frankly gestapo-like organization to do the right thing. On what basis do you assume that anything at all will be addressed in time?
The fact that the STF is under no obligation to provide proof, or indeed evidence of any kind to support their banning decisions makes it even less likely that the right thing will be done in time. Without a visible, public outcry from those wrongly affected, the most likely scenario seems to me that the STF will never make substantive note of these complaints.
Personally I am not worried at all about Swine Flu, but I am more than a little worried about this. A very close friend of mine was just banned for no reason whatsoever. I know for an absolute fact that she does not and has not ever engaged in RMT of any form. More than a few players have flooded this and other forums with similar complaints. The only common thread the community has been able to make thusfar is that each of these players possessed multiple gardening mules for their own personal profits: a tactic that RMT organizations are known to have copied en masse for the purpose of selling the gil.
Particularly when you take into account the degree to which automated processes are apparently present in the STF filtering out the RMT from the legitimate players, the fact that some clearly legitimate players have been banned in this round makes it entirely plausible that anyone with multiple gardening mules is subject to the same treatment. That's not paranoia. It's simple common sense.
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I'm sure it sucks, but to be honest I am personally inclined to believe SE. They aren't going to ban people for doing nothing when that is their revenue stream. It's like McDonald's banning fat people from eating there because they want people to eat more healthy foods, it just doesn't happen.
False logic here. No doubt the STF is under a great deal of pressure to remove RMT from the game. Every player in the game receiving /tells from RMT mules look bad for a company that says they're doing everything they can to combat RMT. It makes them the subject of ridicule amongst their player base. It could very easily cause them to turn to the STF and say, "Look, people, it's your job to combat RMT: step your game up!"
Of course, the job of distinguishing RMT from legitimate players is by its nature an inexact science at best. The STF might reply, "we can be more aggressive, but that increases the chances that legitimate players will be hit in our sweeps," a concern that S/E may or may not treat as a priority.
Oh, I have no doubt that the STF *thinks* that they banned RMT, but that doesn't mean that they're correct. Mistakes happen.
The real issue here is the degree to which the secretive nature of the STF makes it easier to brush false positives under the rug.
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