-Misaki wrote

imgur wrote I know everyone is saying to change your profile and whatnot, but at least hear me out.

Can microsoft really do that? Think about apartments or dorms that only have one connection? Wouldn't we hear cases of bans from one modder in an apartment building or something? This has just never made sense to me.

Also, unless you're knowledgeable in this area, don't reply.

*chimes in*

Not trying to grave dig, but I see this brought up a lot and felt the need to educate you guys. For your question, imgur: "Can microsoft really do that?" Well.. yeah. Can they do that? As in is legal? By all means. Will they 100% definitely ban you? Eh.. depends. If you get retail banned due to multiple cases of Jtag activity on an individual IP, yes. If you, or your brother or Dan from down the street repeatedly breaks the CoC on your IP, it's bound to happen, especially since you are allowing it to happen (in Microsoft's eyes) -- you're held accountable for what is being sent and received on your end. For the question: "think about apartments or dorms that only have one connection? Wouldn't we hear cases of bans from one modder in an apartment building or something?" this is where it becomes more technical.

In the nerdy world known as "Networking", there are two main pieces of information that are interpreted when sending or receiving information -- the public IP address (shared or not) and the MAC address.(there are countless other little things, but I'm trying to put this in layman's terms) Now I'm sure you know what an IP is, so I won't go into detail on that. As for the duty of the MAC address, it's job is to be a sort of interpreter which identifies the BIA (burned-in-address, think of it as a phone number) of all the media devices on a network. So, for example, you might have a laptop, Smart TV and two Xboxs on your network, each of them sharing the same IP, but all having their own MAC address (this is where the answer to your 'multiple people in an apartment sharing the network' question is answered). Since each device has it's own MAC address, which is unique to the specific media device, they can be singled out from the other devices on the network, even though they are using the same IP. So, when you're sending the information from your Xbox or Jtag to Microsoft's servers, your IP and MAC are received and interpreted, so even if you and Bob from 4-B have the same IP, only Bob will be banned, since he has the offending IP/MAC combo -- that is, if you aren't the one modding (which is almost always the case when these questions are asked)

Now, the only downside to this (in Microsoft's case) is that multiple offenses usually result in a flat out IP ban, so even if you haven't done anything yourself, Bob took you and everyone else down with him. So, is it mandatory to change your IP if you're connecting to online with your Jtag? Not at all, but would it be a good safety precaution? Yes it would. There's no need to be over-paranoid about it, but if you don't want to take any risks at all, go for it.

tl;dr: Life isn't fair, and people (or you) can screw you over. (So it's always a good idea to change your IP when modding)