Alt Detections & VPN Intrusions

What is an Alt Detection? What is a VPN Intrusion? Let's get into it.

What is an Alt?

An "alt," or "alternative," is a secondary account typically used to circumvent or evade administrative or moderation actions against the primary account. While this is not always the case, its popularity has increased over recent years. Our goal is to better assist servers in addressing issues with alt accounts rejoining with malicious intent. Alt Detections occur when a user verifies in a server and meets certain criteria. This includes shared IPs, cookies, and other algorithmic data that the bot processes in order to make the connection between two accounts.

Once an account has been verified, we cannot change or adjust the information in the database. The alt detection is permanent.

If a verified account is no longer accessible (I.E. lost password/email, locked due to 2FA/MFA, banned by a server, terminated/banned by Discord, hacked, etc.) the account will not be able to verify is servers protected by Double Counter.

If an account was detected as an alt account of someone else, this is because the user either shares an IP with them, used their verification link, or used the same device to attempt to verify.

The choice to allow an alt account into a server is entirely up to the staff team of that server. We will not manually override a server's decision to block alt accounts. If a user is unable to make contact with the server they are having issues in, there is nothing more they can do. If a server chooses to disable their DMs or does not provide a ticket system that is available, users that have been detected as Alts will not be able to verify in that server.

Each server has the right to allow accounts into their server, at their own discretion. If you are confident that an Alt account should be permitted to enter your server, you can use the /manverify command to manually skip the verification process, which will give them the verified role. This command is server-exclusive and does not impact verifications on any other server.

What is a VPN Intrusion?

A VPN Intrusion means that when a user attempted to verify, the IP was sourced from a hosting service (VPN, BitTorrent, Proxy, Content Delivery Network, etc.). This can unknowingly be triggered by a variety of things. Most commonly the culprits are ad-blockers, iOS Private Relay, and "privacy" browsers such as Brave and Opera.

Given this information, we can confidently say that not all VPN Intrusions are bad. The user will simply need to adjust their settings (disable an ad-blocker, toggle iOS Private Relay, or just use a different browser) in order to successfully pass the verification process. If the user is actively using a VPN during the verification process, they will need to temporarily disable the VPN and reverify with a new verification link. Once they have successfully verified, they are free to turn the VPN back on.

Users are urged to visit the Double Counter Community and open a ticket if they feel like their VPN Intrusion is false. We will investigate the detection and make an educated decision on whether or not to manually verify them in the server they were having issues in. Unlike Alt Detections, VPN Intrusions are not permanent and are only reflected on the respective server.

Similar to Alt Detections though, you can also use the /manverify command to manually skip the verification process and give them the verified role.