It appears that users are being banned from 3DS online services, en masse. There's no direct cause right now, and seemingly no linking factor. This post is meant as an announcement for users, to be wary, and that GBAtemp will keep you updated as soon as more info rolls in. If you have been banned, please post in the thread below, and we will try to keep tabs on the situation. To be extra sure, it can't hurt to turn off your 3DS's wireless capabilities, so you might as well do that for now.

Edit 1: it appears that e-Shop access isn't restricted if you are banned.

Edit 2: A caller to Nintendo reported that the company said this ban is due to "unauthorized software usage".

Edit 3: @LinkSoraZelda is collecting info. Contact him if you are banned.

Edit 4: Click and fill this out if you were BANNED.

Edit 5:

[11:28:19 PM] Clector: Curiously the page of that error in Nintendo Support website used to have this:Error Code: 002-0102 Situation: You receive the error code 002-0102 when attempting to connect online. What to Do: If you continue to experience this issue, please contact Nintendo by calling 1-800-255-3700. Representatives are available from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., Pacific Time, 7 days a week.
[11:28:44 PM] Clector: Now it says this: What to Do: If you are experiencing this error code, your Nintendo 3DS family system has been banned due to unauthorized system modifications, play of unauthorized versions of one or more games, and/or connecting to the official game servers in violation of our terms of service. This ban is effective immediately and requests to remove the ban will not be processed.

Thanks to @Joom

Edit 6: Aurora Wright is taking another poll here

Edit 7: Not a lot is known but

There are bans happening, they are happening in all regions.
All models in the 3ds family seem to be candidates for banning.
There is no indication they will be anything other than permanent.
A game or DLC may end up being a cause but there is no one game or DLC that ties banned users together.
The cause or causes are as yet unknown, though it does seem to be related to modifications. Reports of unmodified consoles being banned are as yet unproven.
The banning is tied to something you can modify, thus you can unban. Doing it while the causes are unknown is likely only going to burn a working token though.
There are semi public tokens out there, Nintendo knows how to browse a forum as well as you so don't be surprised if they also get banned.
It does not seem to be limited to a given base firmware version, it does not seem to be limited to any one custom firmware type. There is some speculation that older hacking methods are not being hit as hard but nothing to confirm this yet.
The data collection could have happened this morning, or it could have been months in the making.
A simple check to see is checking your friends list, by itself it will not ban you.
Some are turning their wifi off. It is doubtful this will be of much use and being banned does not seem to come with any downsides that wifi being off will not also mimic.
You may have escaped a ban thus far but it could happen at any point. It could be that they stop in the future, it has happened on other consoles, but you would be living in hope rather than any particularly well founded logic.
The bans are done on the side of Nintendo's servers rather than your 3ds so there is also that.

If you hack your devices/games then their online functionality may be troubled. This has been known for decades, Nintendo seems to have finally caught up with that.

Please continue to share information with the thread or the links in previous edits.

Update 5/30

HOW TO HELP AVOID BANS (we think)​

If I was to guess from the information we have gathered since the ban wave, it seems likely that they are looking for TitleIDs that don't exist. Homebrew shows up in the activity log as the Download Play app, and fake CIA's show up as just ??????. That last one is what I'm guessing they are looking for.

If you are not banned yet or before you unban yourself, go into your friends list, choose settings, and turn off the option to "show friends what game you are playing." This will prevent you from playing games online with friends, so turn it back on when you wanna game with someone, but ALWAYS keep it off when running custom CIAs. Next, go into system settings -> internet settings -> spotpass, and turn off BOTH options. One is auto download software, the other sends system information to Nintendo. Also, make sure you don't have your favorite title set to something stupid like FBI or any other non-Nintendo CIA.

Its VERY likely that these options are what tipped off Nintendo, but we aren't 100% certain yet. The amount of banned people that had one of these options turned on was over 80% for each. If I was to assume that some of those people overlap, its very possible (but not confirmed) that 100% of banned people in the survey had at least one of those options turned on. I personally had all of them off and I have TONS of reasons for Nintendo to ban me.... yet I am not banned (yet).

Another bit of advice: Only run custom CIAs when offline, and after you close them, run a "legit" game like Smash Bros. or something before shutting down or going back online. This way your most recent title won't show up as a fake CIA

Current Theories as to what causes a ban
​

* SpotPass Settings: 8 users out of 46 users that were banned have SpotPass completely shut off, or SpotPass only (no friends list visibility)
* Firmware Version (Luma, Nintendo): Literally all reports ranged from 10.2+, I can get exact numbers for this if you'd like, but all firmwares were affected.
* Firmware Type (A9LH, B9S): 44 of the 126 B9S users that answered were banned, pattern was mirrored for A9LH users as well.
* Homebrew Titles such as FBI, HBL, Luma Updater, Themely, and freeShop: Literally about 98% of users both banned and unbanned had some combination of these applications installed. However the common ones were: FBI, HBL, LumaUpdater and NTR.
* Save Modification: Equal amounts of users on both sides have reported save modification in some form, either with PKSM or another save editor
* System Transfers: 188 users said that they had not previously system transfered, 61 of those users were banned; 16 users said they transferred from a hacked console, only three of them received a ban; 13 said they transferred from a stock system and likewise were banned. The rest of our sample did not answer this question.
* Activity Log Information: A majority of those who have not been banned have said they had NOT cleaned their activity logs. I can get exact numbers for this too on request.

This information is just what I've found. Like I said, there could be variables or things we haven't even checked for yet. But these are things that I feel should be disproven, at least with the current dataset we have.

• From the information that we've gathered from some people that have used a packet sniffer such as WireShark, the following data is sent to Nintendo's online gaming servers as soon as the 3DS connects to the internet:
  • Amount of time spent online (timer stops when either the system is disconnected from the internet, or connection drops out, then starts the timer again in a new session when it reconnects to the internet).
  • The game being played and amount of time spent on it during that session.
  • The console's unique hexadecimal ID used in the LocalFriendCodeSeedB, along with it's RSA-signed signature.
  • The console's serial number in which is broadcasted from the SoC and is hard coded in the SoC.
  • Friend Code generated on the Nintendo 3DS system, if one has been generated.
  • Internet connection status (either online or offline).
  • The Nintendo Network ID, if there is one linked to it.
  • Even if the sending of SpotPass Information is switched off, or even hiding your currently playing games. It does not prevent the system from sending currently playing information to Nintendo's online gaming servers, it only hides it from your friends in your friend list (like being invisible on the forum, while mods and admins can still see you). Why? Because even people without a Friend Code on their system have been getting banned too!

• The following data is NOT sent to Nintendo's online gaming servers:
  • The data from the Nintendo 3DS's Activity Log. Oddly enough, while Nintendo does explicitly state that they collect Activity Log data, they're actually referring to their own server's Activity Log, which always tracks every console's online activity, and keeps a record of them that is stored forever. And is only collected in increments of data through a timer and a currently playing list.
    
  • Games or apps that have not been played, regardless if they're legitimate or not. You only get tracked when you're online and using that game or app.
  • Using games or apps while offline. Even though it is stored on the 3DS console's Activity Log, that data is NOT sent to Nintendo's online gaming servers.
  • Custom Firmware. Though we can't rule out the possibility of them releasing a 3DS update in the future that adds such function to collect MD5 hashes of files and FIRM data and send them to Nintendo online gaming servers (which would also be updated in a maintenance).

• Things that people think what happens with consoles, but really doesn't:
  • "LocalFriendCodeSeedB is transferred to the system upon doing a system transfer". This is false, the LocalFriendCodeSeedB remains on the system and does not move to another system.
  • "The console generates a LocalFriendCodeSeedB upon first startup". Again, this is false, the LocalFriendCodeSeedB is made during the manufacturing process at Foxconn. It is generated at the factory, flashed to the NAND flash memory storage, then created as an account on Nintendo's online gaming server and Nintendo eShop server immediately when being manufactured. It is absolutely impossible to generate a LocalFriendCodeSeedB and be able to connect to Nintendo's online gaming server and/or Nintendo eShop server, even if you knew the RSA generation key for it. You'd end up with Error Code 002-0102 "This console's online services have been restricted by Nintendo" if you even tried (the error can either mean two things: The hexadecimal ID doesn't exist on the server, or the request to access the hexadecimal ID has been denied which in other words... banned). So a LocalFriendCodeSeedB generator will NEVER happen! Because it's not worth doing, if it can't connect.
  • Switching off "Currently Playing" information. Once again, this does not hide your online activity from Nintendo's online gaming server, it only hides it from your friends.
  • Switching off SpotPass. Nope, this too doesn't hide your online activity from Nintendo's online gaming server, it only opts-out of receiving SpotPass data, sorry.

So pretty much the bottom line is, if anyone has been using custom apps and/or titles not installed through Nintendo eShop while online in the past, guess what? You're screwed! And it is only a matter of time before your console's unique hexadecimal ID in the LocalFriendCodeSeedB is banned from Nintendo's online gaming server. This will mean, your console can't access the Friend List or play any online functions in games.

If you have been online while using custom apps and/or titles not installed through Nintendo eShop and haven't been banned yet, that's because Nintendo hasn't caught up to you yet. They're still going through each unique hexadecimal ID's Activity Log on their server, and by Activity Log, I mean the Activity Log on their server, not the 3DS console's activity log. And it will be only a matter of time before you're banned too.

Thanks to @Platinum Lucario @MadMageKefka and @ShadowEO !

 

[ShadowEO]

So have we determined that its only CFW users getting hit? Im on a now stock 3ds, used to have homebrew- not banned, still. (Ive been outta the loop for a bit)

We haven't determined it in this thread, but I've seen in other places such as /r/3dshacks that there have been no verified clean systems that have been hit.

 

[doughmay]

Welp, deleted everything from my activity log, turned off all of the spot pass features. Time to see if I have been banned...


EDIT: Checked my friends list, and did not get a ban error code.

 

[Shad0w136]

We've had a couple reports back in the page 310 area where they were banned with no NNID, not sure about Mii status.

I can confirm I wasn't banned, and I didn't have a NNID but I did make a mii just to get into the friend list xD I wonder if that stopped me from being banned .-.

 

[marbles73]

Does Nintendo not realize that they are a for-profit company and not a government? Punishing their customers in this way does not make good business sense. They should be encouraging users to go back to being legitimate. Let customers remove the offense and pay a $10 unban fee. Second offense, make it a $50 unban fee. Only the 3rd offense should be a permaban. The permanban should actually come with a coupon for $20 off a Nintendo Switch game. Now these people have to either buy a new 3DS or go ahead and just upgrade to the Switch, a currently unhackable system. Customers willing to pay $60 in unban fees are good customers. They will buy a new system and should be encouraged to upgrade. Those willing to pay $10 in unban fees may have learned their lesson and will be good customers. People who are banned and have no way of being unbanned are going to be upset. They may be upset enough to stop being a Nintendo customer altogether. My 3DS wasn't even banned as far as I know, and I'm still upset. This ban is making we want to buy a Switch even less. If I decide to quite Nintendo then any future children I may have will be raised without Nintendo too. They can play at a friend's house, but they are going to prefer the console they were raised with. Even before this, Nintendo has been doing a horrible retaining their older fanbase. This will affect the next generation. They are idiots.

This is such a Japanese thing to do. Did you know they will throw people into jail for just tiny amounts of marijuana? But reading porn in public and groping women on trains is ok. Pussy eating game shows are on television. It's perfectly acceptable to have sex with women (even prostitutes) dressed up as underage girls. They have video games full of incestuous rape underage fantasies. But marijuana and video game piracy, that's where they draw the line.

Sure it makes business sense, they don't want people misusing the system to go online and cheat and hack and ruin the experience for others. Not that big a deal. I feel like you're overreacting but I agree with the sentiment of there being a way to return to stock without getting rebanned. Now that they're cracking down there's nothing people can do even if they wanted to stop using CFW.

 

[MegaBoyEXE]

I can confirm I wasn't banned, and I didn't have a NNID but I did make a mii just to get into the friend list xD I wonder if that stopped me from being banned .-.

I would recommend you deleting all your Miis, or at least disable the sharing information in friend list.
I still suspect Friend title sharing as one big culprist.

 

[RedBlueGreen]

Sure it makes business sense, they don't want people misusing the system to go online and cheat and hack and ruin the experience for others. Not that big a deal. I feel like you're overreacting but I agree with the sentiment of there being a way to return to stock without getting rebanned. Now that they're cracking down there's nothing people can do even if they wanted to stop using CFW.

If this were the case only cheaters would be banned.

 

[Shad0w136]

I would recommend you deleting all your Miis, or at least disable the sharing information in friend list.
I still suspect Friend title sharing as one big culprist.

Oh i already did do all of that, but thanks

Honestly, I still expect to be banned, but i have a non-hacked 2ds incase anything like that ever happened anyway

 

[Futurdreamz]

I think nintendo considers the earlier banning waves to be enough warnings. I suspect that they have given up on trying to force hackers to start paying for their games (are any of you really going to pay for all of your games if that's what it takes to avoid being banned?) and are focusing on making their online services safe for paying customers (plus running servers costs money, which is subsidized by paid games).

Based on Nintendo's actions I think they genuinely don't care if you pirate, however they do care if you use their servers for free. Nintendo loses little if you pirate a game, however they can incur a deficit if their server costs are high with insufficient game sales to cover the use.

And if you keep that in mind, I think you can narrow down what Nintendo considers a banning offense and what they do not. Downloading games? Not condoned but not banned. Going a little bit online? Not good but probably ignored. Spending a LOT of time online in games you did not pay for? That's a banning.

I'm betting that we're barking up the wrong tree in figuring out exactly what software configurations Nintendo is detecting, and assuming that remaining unbanned means you were undetected. They are probably using all methods or at least the more easy ones, and then banning only the subset that spends the most time online.

 

[Natural]

I can live banned. No big deal LOL. Just finished playing some dual destinies *.* Love it.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

You can unban yourself easily but I would recommend not playing with the internet on until we've figured out how they banned people.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/all-3-methods-to-get-unbanned-from-recent-ban-wave.450679/

 

[rawsome]

FWIW, my N3DS wasn't banned. I'm using B9S, latest Luma and am on 11.4.
Region is EU and I did just about every thing they could be after, except for using a save editor and whatever happened with Fire Emblem.
Before B9S, I was running A9LH since, I'd say, last July.
SpotPass was turned off, sending information to Nintendo was turned on. Log definitely wasn't clean whatsoever.
Last time I played was last week.

 

[ShadowEO]

I'm gonna start observing again for a little bit, I'll be around, just not talking as much here. So remember, keep the thread on topic, ban discussion. Circumvention has it's own three or four threads in this very sub-forum alone.

 

[Bu2d85]

So this banwave has been going on and has anyone who hasn't upgraded to bt9 from arm9lh gotten banned? Because it seems that boot9strap is a direct cause of it, so should I update from a9lh?

(N3ds 11.3 sysnand, 11.4 emunand)

I would like to know how many people were banned that are both NNID-less and Mii-less.
None of my friends with this setup were banned.

No NNID and no Miiverse here. Still banned.

Well not banned anymore since using the public localfriendcodeseed or whatever it's called. No NNID means I have nothing to lose.

 

[vinipeix]

I have the legit H&S app + standalone FBI and I am not banned, but my friend (who is also not banned) has FBI injected in H&S, no clean H&S.
So if they did check that, that would make no sense for him to not yet be banned (unless the ban is coming).

Just pointing that it is a commonplace among cfw users
I also have the FBI injected into H&S myself and I'm still not banned yet

 

[ShadowEO]

Just pointing that it is a commonplace among cfw users
I also have the FBI injected into H&S myself and I'm still not banned yet

Agreed. Both versions seem to be commonplace among CFW users, including LumaUpdater, freeShop, HBL, FBI and Themely for both banned and non-banned users. I'm feeling like they aren't checking homebrew titles or if they are, they aren't looking for these specifically, otherwise we'd have seen more. But that's just my thought on the matter.

 

[marbles73]

If this were the case only cheaters would be banned.

Not necessarily. Maybe they're just looking for the most foolproof way to block online cheating. They didn't ban everything after all, they're not being as harsh as with the Sun & Moon ban. Also save editing can also be considered cheating, further supporting the case that they may as well ban everyone on CFW. For bonus they get to discourage piracy and hacking (on future systems too) as well. It's all speculation really.

 

[ShadowEO]

Not necessarily. Maybe they're just looking for the most foolproof way to block online cheating. They didn't ban everything after all, they're not being as harsh as with the Sun & Moon ban. Also save editing can also be considered cheating, further supporting the case that they may as well ban everyone on CFW. For bonus they get to discourage piracy and hacking (on future systems too) as well. It's all speculation really.

It is. Though I want to point out that we've had some reports of save modification among non-banned users as well. But I do fully agree, this is in no way as severe as the SuMo ban was. The hammer cameth down and it cameth down hard.

 

[MattKimura]

They sure are taking a while to ban some users like myself. I'll give them another week and see what happens. I'm sure my time will come though, they'd be stupid to just stop now. I don't see a reason for them to stop when they got us good. I just wonder if within a year later, using public seeds would be great and they'd eventually stop doing these checks. Unless they have a permanent system setup that checks and flags users.

I'm an ex sumo ban member with changed lfcsb, changed serial, removed NNID, spotpass turned off since a long time ago, friends list notification turned off since long ago. Maybe that's what's postponing my eventual ban.

This is my ex's lfcsb, so if this gets banned she will be banned too. But she had cfw too anyways so it doesn't matter.

 

[ShadowEO]

They sure are taking a while to ban some users like myself. I'll give them another week and see what happens. I'm sure my time will come though, they'd be stupid to just stop now. I don't see a reason for them to stop when they got us good. I just wonder if within a year later, using public seeds would be great and they'd eventually stop doing these checks. Unless they have a permanent system setup that checks and flags users.

It depends, they may not actually have a good way to detect this stuff. We haven't found any real correlation between users that have been banned vs users who haven't. I'm willing to bet that the ban wave is actually over and that what we're seeing here is delayed reporting (someone opening their console later after it being idle for a few days and finding it banned, or people just coming in who are just learning of this thread).

We haven't seen any verified, brand new bans today that have been absolutely linked to this banwave. Not saying that it is truly over, but this wave seems to be. Like you, I myself am awaiting the hammer, fully expecting it to come at any moment, which is why I am leaving my 3DS on and connected with SpotPass on and everything else normal... Why? FOR SCIENCE!! (Alright, alright, I'll stop saying it.. I know it's probably getting annoying.)

 

[Slartibartfast42]

What's going to happen is many of the banned people will just live with the ban. It will cause them to play Nintendo less. It will allow their Nintendo addiction to die down. This will make them buy less Nintendo in the future. As overall market share goes down, it only causes market share to go down even more. Video games have a positive feedback loop.

Some people may want to get unbanned badly. They are going to end up finding a new seed. A black market for seeds will develop to meet the demand. Unethical people will reap the profits from the black market. The money for the new seed will come out of their video game budget, preventing the sale of a new game. Nintendo should be selling new seeds themselves (almost pure profit), but we know they won't do that.

This is such bad bussiness. Imagine if drug dealers limited how much you could buy from them. People would either decide to stop buying the drugs or go get a new dealer.

An example of the psychology. I was deeply addicted to one of those free mobile for a couple days. I didn't send any money yet, but some people obviously do, and how knows, maybe someday I would have. The company didn't do anything wrong in this example, but it shows the psychology. My game get out of synchronization somehow, maybe bad wifi or something. They wanted me to relaunch the game. It just so happens that at the timing of the game I was at, this caused a major bug. My game was essentially locked. This bug may have been fixable if I asked them for help. I think this bug would have also gone away on its own if I waited 2 and half days. This little hiccup made me realize hard that I should not be playing this game at all. Bye bye game. Moral of the story, disruptions of addictions are bad. Some of these people will realize that they don't need the game after all. The sting goes away. There's a million other games and other forms of entertainment.

As far as cheaters go, I wouldn't even ban them, I'd segregate them. Let the cheaters play against the other cheaters and any users who have opted in. I'd be fun as hell to get a bit buzzed, smoke a bowl, and go cheat at MarioKart online, as long as all the other players were cool with it. It would completely change the game. Cheaters playing against cheaters would need to develop completely different strategies. It shouldn't cost much. You just run two almost identical virtual servers on the same hardware that dynamically allocates resources based on demand. The cheat detect code sets a flag in the database to only send them to the cheat version of the server. You could actually do the same thing with the piracy users. If you let pirated users only play against other pirated users, that will degrade their experience. Those that absolutely can't afford the game will put up with it until they can afford it. People who get fed up of the segregated servers will just buy a legitimate copy. The marginal cost of supporting the pirated users is tiny. This would be more than made up for from the revenue of conversions.

Come on now. I haven't even taken any business classes, how am I smarter than this entire company? They keep thinking "person bad, person must be punished" instead of "person not paying enough, make person pay more".

Hopefully, if Nintendo reads my free advice, they do the honorable thing and offer me some compensation. You too other video game companies.

 

[RustInPeace]

And if you keep that in mind, I think you can narrow down what Nintendo considers a banning offense and what they do not. Downloading games? Not condoned but not banned. Going a little bit online? Not good but probably ignored. Spending a LOT of time online in games you did not pay for? That's a banning.

Except that the games I'm online with, Pokemon titles, are legit carts, I paid for them, I pre-ordered them. The phone calls I had with Nintendo customer service this week had no bringing up of pirated titles being played. They definitely brought this up in my previous banning in December 2016. It's not just about pirated games, it's "unauthorized software," they probably are finally playing catch-up, hence the big banwave.