Account suspended

[rxvchio]

Discussion Type

Question

Discussion Content

Hello all,

I opened this account just so I can write here.

Two days ago I found out that my github account (username: felichio, email: fsafaridis@hotmail.com) was suspended.. I dont have any clue why/what triggered this..
Last interaction was a push on a repo on Tuesday (16/6) evening, which succeded, and I found out that the account was suspended on Thursay morning while trying to pull from a repo.

The only unusual thing that I remember was that on Tuesday night, the official Github Pull request vsode extension (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.vscode-pull-request-github) was prompting authentication pops ups, accross all my 3 or 4 at the time vscode instances running. I was cancelling them, but they keep coming like once every 30s-1m .. I ultimately disabled the extension since I dont use it, and walked away.. Maybe the extension kept trying in the bg (I dont remember if I restared vscode), and I was banned for excessive failed logged in attempts.. or the suspend was already in place for another unknown to me reason and hence the extension was failing to authenticate.

If not the extension, I have really really zero clues on what happened. I am second guessing at this stage. I am cautious user, and my account is 10+ years old since my university years.

Github does not notified me on this. I contacted the support of course and make prayers for them to at least see my ticket..

Please if anybody can answer, is there some guarantee that my case will be reviewed in some normal time frame? It has been two days since I opened my ticket and I know this is not much, but I am kind of afraid that my case will be lost.

Sorry for this but I am extremely stressed, never thought something lke this could happen. I lost not only my portfolio from my early years, but I cannot also work for my org (not using this current account since it is said that my case can be delayed even more).
This is basically a catastrophe for me, still cannot believe it.

[faketut]

Really sorry — this is genuinely stressful, and you're doing the right things. A few honest, practical notes from what I and others have seen with account suspensions:

1. Nobody here can lift the suspension. Only GitHub Support / Trust & Safety can. So the goal of everything below is just to make sure your ticket reaches the right team and isn't waiting on something from you.

2. There is no published SLA for suspension appeals. From the public reports I've seen, the realistic range is anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Two days with no human reply is unfortunately normal and does not mean your ticket was lost. The auto-reply you got after submitting is the receipt; if you have a ticket number, hang on to it.

3. Use the right form, once. The correct entry point is the appeals form, not generic support:

• Appeal an account or content restriction (sign in as a different account is fine — you reference the suspended username in the form)
• Or the general flow: support.github.com/contact → "Account, Login, & Profile" → "Restored / restricted account"

Do not open multiple tickets for the same issue — duplicates get merged and can actually push you to the back of the queue. If you already submitted one, just reply to that thread with any new info instead of filing a new one.

4. What to include in your appeal (this is the part that actually speeds things up):

• The exact username (felichio) and the email on the account (fsafaridis@hotmail.com).
• A short, factual timeline (what you wrote above is good — push on Tue evening worked, Thu morning pull failed).
• Mention the VS Code "GitHub Pull Requests" extension auth loop explicitly, and that you suspect it may have triggered an abuse/rate-limit heuristic. This is a real, known failure mode — the extension can spam token requests in the background, and that pattern can look like credential-stuffing to automated systems. Naming it gives a reviewer something concrete to check.
• State clearly that you'd like the account reinstated and, if there was a TOS issue, you'd like to know what it was so you can correct it.
• If your work is blocked, say so plainly ("this affects my employment at [org]") — they do triage on impact.

5. Things to not do while you wait:

• Don't create new accounts to work around the suspension. Operating evasion accounts is itself a TOS violation and will get the new account banned and can hurt your appeal. (Creating one throwaway just to post in Discussions, as you did, is fine — that's not evasion.)
• Don't post the ticket number publicly.
• Don't email random GitHub employees on LinkedIn/Twitter — it doesn't speed things up and can confuse the ticket routing.

6. Protect what you can right now:

• If you have local clones of your important repos, push them as bundles (git bundle create repo.bundle --all) to a USB drive or another git host as cold backup. Your local clones are not affected by the suspension.
• If colleagues or collaborators have forks of your repos, those forks still exist and contain your history. Worst case, your code is not gone.

7. About the extension theory: plausible but unprovable from outside. If it's true, reinstatement is usually straightforward once a human reviews it — automated abuse triggers are explicitly reversible. That's actually the good scenario.

Hang in there. Two days is well within the normal window. Reply on your existing support ticket once with the timeline + the VS Code extension detail and then wait — refreshing or filing new tickets won't make it faster, and unfortunately this community discussion can't escalate it.

Drafted a calm, practical reply: set realistic expectations (only Support can reinstate, no SLA, 2 days is normal), pointed to the correct appeals form, listed what to include in the appeal (with the VS Code extension auth-loop angle highlighted as a concrete lead), warned against counterproductive actions like creating evasion accounts or duplicate tickets, and suggested local-clone backups as risk mitigation.

[rxvchio]

I am extremely grateful for your thorough reply @faketut. thank you really.
I want to ask your for one final suggestion regarding my issue, if you have time to answer.

When I discovered the suspension, I opened immediately a ticket as an anonymous user (I mean not logged in user, since at the time the suspended account was my only account) at the links you provided. I don't remember the exact url, but the form is the same as on the above links. Hopefully that isn't an problem

I opened a ticket (x), and attributed my suspension to an external ip change. At that morning I had issues with my isp so I made a hotspot in my android device so I can route the traffic of my desktop through that. So I thought, they probably (I mean github) flagged my ip change through active sessions and suspended my account. I know this can sound funny, but I was not thinking like very clearly at that time. What I also mean active sessions, is just simple tabs open at my browsers... I was just stressed and rushed to this possible explanation. I didn't even thought of that occurrence I mentioned above with the extension.

So after 20 minutes, I opened a second ticket (y), which at least I had the good sense to reference it to x and mentioned the occurrence with the extension which just had come to my mind. I know this was wrong, since you have to just reply on your automated github reply in order to give more context but as you can guess it became evident to me only after I read the second automated reply.

Anyway long story short, I have opened two tickets x,y with y referencing x . The thing is they are not so structured and explanatory as your suggestion. I don't even remember referencing my username (at least email was mandatory), and also work was mentioned but not the org. It was a mess.. Didn't state anything regarding TOS, and also the extension explanation didn't have any dates like I did here with a way cooler head.

Should I reply to the submission ack of ticket y, following your helpful guideline and restating everything more clearly? Or am I being in danger with that action?

[faketut]

You're welcome.
Short answer to your question: yes, reply to ticket y. You are not in danger by doing that. Adding context to an existing ticket is exactly the intended use of those reply emails. What you want to avoid is opening a third ticket — that's the thing that actually slows people down. Replying to one you already have is fine.

A few small refinements so the reply works for you, not against you:

1. Reply to y (the one that already references x). That keeps everything in one thread. If you reply to both x and y separately, the agent has to reconcile two parallel updates.

2. Lead with one sentence acknowledging the mess, then give the clean version. Something like:

   Apologies for the two tickets — I was panicking. Treat this message as the authoritative one; ticket x can be closed as a duplicate of y.

   That single line saves an agent 5 minutes of figuring out what's going on, which is genuinely valuable.

3. Then paste the clean writeup — username felichio, the email on the account, the timeline with dates, the VS Code Pull Requests extension auth loop (with the ~30s interval across 3–4 windows detail), the hotspot/IP change as a secondary possible factor (not the main theory anymore), and a one-line "this is blocking my work at [org name]".

4. Don't retract your earlier theories. Don't write "ignore what I said about the IP change." Just present the full picture and let the reviewer weigh it. Retractions read as flustered; a calm "here is everything I now know" reads as cooperative.

5. Don't apologize more than once. One acknowledgment is humanizing; multiple apologies start to look like you're hiding something. You did nothing wrong.

6. Then stop. Send that one consolidated reply and then truly let it sit. Don't follow up again for at least 5–7 business days unless they ask you something. Repeated nudges on a queue genuinely do push tickets back in many support systems, and at minimum they annoy the human who eventually picks it up.

One more reassurance: a 10-year-old account, a coherent technical explanation (the extension auth loop is plausible and reviewers will recognize it), no evasion behavior on your part, and you proactively contacting Support — that is, frankly, close to the best-case profile for a successful appeal. The waiting is awful but the situation itself sounds very recoverable.

Good luck. Update the thread if/when it resolves, which helps the next person who ends up in this same spot.

[rxvchio]

ok, thank you again! will definitely do all of the above.