I have recently had my old account removed for being an alt. Two questions. One: Why are alt accounts not allowed? And two: How did my account get banned? It wasn’t an alt, it was my only account, so why did the system decide to ban it?
P.S. I don’t care about getting my account back. I hadn’t been on for over a year. I’m just curious
Hello there @ArcticTheHunter 
if your accounts got suspended on another forum I suggest you ask there. To do this go to the url and type /about to see the contact email.
You can cheat things like:
the list goes on…
Staff can do an IP check on your account to see if they match.
Hope this answers your question.
Just curious. Something isn’t quite right with this post. Was it an “alt”, or was it not ? If it was, reasons and how it may have been found have been described by Ondrejj (even with different IPs, it can be detected with fingerprinting. There is a topic about it). In this case, problem solved.
But if it really wasn’t, has it indeed been “removed” or “banned” by “the system” ? (it shouldn’t !) Or was it maybe done manually by an admin/moderator ? Or was there maybe an automatic removal of inactive accounts after a period of time ? (nothing to do with “alts”)
That was my first impression as soon as he said he hadn’t been on for over a year.
But ondrejj was right in suggesting he ask at the forum where his account was dumped. But… was it actually banned or simply deleted for inactivity? 
Either way, best of luck to you, @ArcticTheHunter. 
When I tried to log on, it said ‘Suspended’ Reason: Sock puppet. A quick Google search shows that this refers to alt accounts. This wasn’t an alt or second account, and the forum has 5-7-year-old accounts that have not been suspended, so I don’t think that my account was autobanned because of age. My only theory on how I got banned is that I used a VPN to hide my IP, so there may have been a false match with a person using that same VPN.
I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. If the reason is “Sock Puppet”, you’re right it is because they believe you have at least one other account (same user - several accounts). The age of the accounts (used or unused since a long time) has nothing to do with this (unless you meant some old accounts were alt accounts from some people).
Yes, you may be right. It is totally possible you show up with the same IP as someone else, especially if you use a quite popular service (the same thing may happen to people logging at work from a big company, for example. It seems to happen often in certain communities attracting several people from some big companies during work).
Now, I don’t think the admin/moderators should ban solely because of an IP match, but maybe they do 
You should definitely see this with them in this case. Not much else to do. (Note: It shouldn’t be something automatic. This has been done manually by someone)
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