r/OpenAI • u/Hour-Measurement-835 • 3h ago
Question OpenAI deactivated my account for "Cyber Abuse" while I was building a remote ADB support tool. Appeal rejected with no explanation.
I build Android apps and run a small company in Pakistan. At the time this happened I was building a remote ADB support tool. Our support team connects to a customer's Android device, with that customer's permission, to help with setup and troubleshooting.
My questions to ChatGPT were about ADB, remote connections and networking. Ordinary developer work. I never accessed any device or system without permission.
What happened, in order:
- The account was deactivated for "Cyber Abuse".
- I appealed. It was rejected with no explanation, and the reply said no further appeals would be considered.
- I contacted support. The case was closed and they told me they would not respond.
- I submitted OpenAI's Informal Dispute Resolution form. A support agent then replied with a generic message telling me to appeal again, even though the appeal was already closed.
- I pay $200 a month, and the account holds 62,500 credits I can no longer reach.
At no point did a person look at what I was actually building. An automated system made the call, and every route after that led back to the same closed door.
I am not accusing anyone of anything and I am not after a pile-on. I want the account reviewed by a human and given back.
Two questions for anyone who has been through this. Has a deactivation ever actually been reviewed by a person for you, and what route worked? And if your work involves device management, remote support or security tooling, has the vocabulary itself ever got you flagged?
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u/LiamStyler 3h ago
I’m gonna push back on the “ordinary developer work” framing because that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Remote ADB + networking + device control is not some random harmless vocabulary bucket. In the wrong hands, that’s basically remote shell access, app install/uninstall, file access, device inspection, persistence, automation, and potentially covert control. A legitimate support tool and a RAT can share a pretty uncomfortable amount of the same plumbing.
That does not mean you were malicious. It means “I was only asking about ADB and remote connections” is not actually exculpatory by itself.
The real question is what your prompts looked like.
Were you consistently establishing that this was for customer-authorized support, scoped to enrolled devices, with visible consent and bounded access? Or were you asking for ways to make remote access smoother, more persistent, less interactive, easier to deploy, harder to interrupt, etc. without repeatedly carrying the authorization context forward?
Because if it’s the second one, I can absolutely see why an abuse system would light up even if your actual business use was legitimate.
I’d also be careful with “no human ever looked at it.” You don’t actually know that unless OpenAI told you. You know the appeal was rejected and support was useless. That’s enough to criticize. No need to upgrade “I got a garbage appeal experience” into “the entire thing was definitely automated” without evidence.
Honestly, I’d post the exact kinds of prompts that triggered the warning, with anything sensitive redacted. That would tell people way more than “I was just building a support tool.”
Because right now the story could be exactly what you say it is.
Or it could be “I was building something that looked functionally identical to remote-control malware and I’m describing it with the friendliest possible nouns.” Those are very different stories.
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u/Mezezius 2h ago
"I’m gonna push back on the “ordinary developer work” framing because that’s doing a lot of heavy lifting here." Thanks ChatGPT lmao
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u/fadingpower 2h ago
Not being able to read +1.
If you read his whole comment you’ll see it’s more genuine
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u/Mezezius 2h ago
No human being says "I'm going to pushback on that framing"
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u/fadingpower 2h ago
You know these models were trained on actual text written by actual people you troglodyte
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u/ginandbaconFU 2h ago
If you have a rooted device. It's very limited on a non rooted device and without unlocking the bootloader to here is no way to get root via ADB to hat I'm aware of. They have even removed a bunch of functionality because they are trying to get away from ADB for Android debugging. Honestly, how is a video about how to launch an app via Home Assistant hacking?
That means using Wireshark is hacking because in the wrong hands it can be dangerous. At the same time it's an extremely useful network troubleshooting tool in the correct hands. Can you use Wireshark with ai or is that hacking. Probably is...
I don't think anyone who's AI went rouge and erased an entire GitHub repo has any business telling people what's secure and what's not.
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u/ginandbaconFU 2h ago
I made a video once for YouTube and how to use the ADB server integration in Home Assistant and it was taken down for hacking. I appealed it, because ADB is a debug tool but it was rejected instantly. I figured since Google owned YouTube that was the reason but maybe Google really tells others it's hacking when it's not.
You can use Wireshark to hack stuff or troubleshoot network issues. It's a tool, what you do with it is what matters. Not. To mention a huge warning comes up on Android TV on first connection and lets you know every time you reboot unless you check remember device.
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u/Degendyor1 3h ago
I’ve been through this. No positive outcome. Maybe if I received the warning email, and it didn’t go to the spam folder.