Why ROBLOX Didn't Die

Cybercrimes are Real Crimes

Just today I learned that you can write a report to the FBI for cybercrimes. If you see someone running around threatening to hack someone, encouraging terrorism, doxxing someone, or even just committing piracy you can report that. That’s not actually solely the province of website owners who are all somehow secretly in direct contact with law enforcement.

One of the things that is certainly covered under cybercrimes is theft. As soon as I realized this, I realized I could report my hacked ROBLOX account that was made in 2007 back when I was very much the target demographic, even though it was hacked all the way back in January. It was hacked the old-fashioned way that people think of, by using some sort of code to make a backdoor and get in, not a scamming or phishing attempt. Then the hacker spammed some words that would get the AI to tag the account for pedophilia and automatically perma-ban it, which is particularly disgusting because not only does it make you think about pedophilia and the fact it’s been epidemic on ROBLOX since COVID made the site popular, but because it makes it harder to catch real pedophiles if hackers and scammers use that to try to delete accounts they’re done with. When the account is permabanned, all the messages are hidden, so the AI can’t find them, then when the ban is appealed, the messages appear again and the account is perma-banned again, which makes it impossible to appeal the account due to how the AI works.

I reported this as an exploit but for the obvious reasons ROBLOX is lying about how much money they have, they didn’t want to fix it, much less pay me for reporting it and showing them how to do that and how it’s used by hackers and scammers. They didn’t even want to give me my account back because they would have to pay me, much less pay me much more for explaining an exploit that was used on my hacked account.

The part of all that which particularly bothers me is, after seeing that ROBLOX was making their virtual currencies worth money after a decade and a half, the first thing I did with my account was start adding personal identification such as my driver’s license to secure my account. This did not prevent it from getting hacked, because the hacker could somehow bypass that. If someone can just hack the code the old-fashioned way, as opposed to phishing information, and get in when I literally made it so I needed to take a picture of myself with my phone for identification, I’m mostly just glad they wanted to take my account’s items and sell them for money rather than committing identity theft, even if the fact ROBLOX won’t give me my account back despite what obviously happened ruined all my memories of that game and just made me think they seem like the scummiest company in existence.

I was going to go back to actually making games for them and I was paying the $5 subscription fee even though I felt too old for that just because I already knew how to make the games, maybe I could just make some games based on the stories I write that I also want to use AI to make shows and films of. Nope, ROBLOX would rather lock me out of my account so I don’t get any money from them and now I just associate their platform with theft, hacking, pedophilia, and Columbine shooting fans so that’s not happening, if I want to make a game I’ll use Godot or something.

Today, when I realized yes, you are allowed and probably encouraged to report cybercrimes even if you’re not the website admin just like you’re encouraged to report burglaries even if it’s not your house, in fact it might be a crime if you can and you don’t, it made me think: is it really ROBLOX’s job to crack down on theft, hacking, pedophilia, and extremism? It’s not your job either. It’s the job of law enforcement, however, they just need reporting. I’m sure they’re more than glad to be helpful to you and me and to get to do the job they signed up for, but you usually have to ask since they’re not generally just standing around at crime scenes.

Then I realized, all these ROBLOX critics like Ruben Sim and Schleppington who are referenced in the Bear Cave’s reporting and Hindenburg’s, have they ever once written an FBI report about pedophiles, scammers, terrorist games, etc.? I found that the FBI has been occasionally involved, but I don’t find that these people have ever written a report themselves whenever they find a pedophilia group or something else horrid. They seem to think it’s ROBLOX’s job to do this. While it’s ROBLOX’s job to make sure pedophiles don’t gather on their platform, it’s not ROBLOX’s job to throw them in jail. It’s not excusable that ROBLOX seems to do nothing about them and let them run free, but if you write a report, you’re not letting them off the hook, because it’s the ROBLOX staff that have to be involved with the FBI, not so much you. If they get tired enough of saying hi to the FBI, you bet they’ll get good at actually preventing pedophilia, hackers, terrorism, etc. or else just shut down. Since ROBLOX has always been a scummy company and I can’t see the admins volunteering to fix their problems, you bet I think it would just end up shutting down.

Cybercrime is real crime and if you see a cybercrime, report it. Then, I’ve once heard someone say it’s normal to drive 5 MPH over the speed limit so I probably can’t expect too much of most people. However, if you’re reading this, we can make the Internet a sane place again even if it’s never going to be a utopia, just report cybercrimes where you see them. I think if you dislike ROBLOX as much as most of us who have been keeping up with the recent ROBLOX news do, you just have to do your part to report crimes instead of thinking only the admins of ROBLOX can report crimes and that’s all. This idea extends way beyond ROBLOX, but ROBLOX is the worst place for it so that’s why I think it’s been on the news so much. Most people don’t learn how to report cybercrimes unlike in-person crimes, and they think it’s not their responsibility, so I don’t think it’s most people’s fault since they don’t get taught. Now you know, you can do something, though, just like I just learned today.

Home Page - Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)

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