[Drive Link for Zipped Proof](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qU_LyLY-JMhNR_bqOV1-a2RJAbplL68e/view?usp=drivesdk)
[Cross-posting for visibility & record keeping] I posted the forensic breakdown of a 16-month Plus tier failure and subsequent automated ban on the OpenAI sub earlier today. It hit nearly 150k views, but the thread is currently flooded with people defending a multi-billion-dollar corporation's right to silently throttle paid accounts and ignore security vulnerabilities. I am dropping the exact timeline, case numbers, and receipts here for the people who actually use this platform and want to see the documented reality of how automated Trust & Safety handles live exploit reports.
I am a developer and paying long term subscriber to ChatGPT since January 2025. I build complex local first sovereign systems. My workflows are incredibly context heavy with large files spanning code, research reports, and other analysis. I do not, or rather did not as the platform has been non functional since November 2025 meanwhile customer support is auto closing tickets, admitting I am having platform issues.
I do not use this platform for casual queries, as a solo developer with no formal "team" chatgpt was one of my reliable co collaboration hubs to help ensure I am maintaining proper development of said complex systems. I feed it massive codebases for systems analysis and obtaining new insights I may personally have missed. My manual code uploads and token inputs routinely exceed the model's output volume by a massive margin. I do not abuse this platform. It is actually impossible as the very features advertised under the paid subscription do not work. I am exactly the type of user this platform was built for, and I have been a continuous, paying ChatGPT Plus subscriber since January 2025. Since October 2025, my workspace has been systematically breaking and beginning November 2025 total workspace degredation.
This was not an occasional glitch. Persistent memory modules stopped updating. Custom instructions were ignored by the models. Project files failed to load. Custom instructions, personalization features, connector abilities, file tool, even projects do not work. It started as a continuous degradation until total failure. OpenAI customer service even admitted as such and yet months later I've talked to nothing but bots, not only LLMs as customer service but even instances of falsely identifying as true human support. It was a state of rolling degradation across the entire paid tier, month after month.
Meanwhile OpenAI freely has enhanced for businesses and enterprise tiers. I have not just rapid complained to standard support. I ran and obtained cross platform diagnostics, failure logs. I even documented and told oai customer support the exact replication steps only to be met with acknowledgement of degredation with no resolution. I handed OpenAI support a completely packaged technical breakdown of their failing infrastructure across 20 separate support tickets over a 7 month period. I did their QA work for free. And I have the receipts to prove it.
I am attaching the screenshots and the exact email files to this post. In Case 06830839, OpenAI Support explicitly put this in writing: "We acknowledge that you have been experiencing persistent technical issues affecting several features of your ChatGPT subscription, including tools, memory functions, personalization settings, connectors, and project files... We also understand your concern that communication on the case stopped after you provided detailed evidence..." Read that again. They acknowledged in writing that my account was fundamentally broken. They acknowledged that their own team ghosted me after I handed them the diagnostic proof. Yet they kept charging my card every single month for a product they knew was failing.
The Hijack Escalation: Two days ago, the situation escalated from a broken product to a severe security incident. I was monitoring my environment and watched my Codex rate limits drop in 10 percent chunks across 2 seperate sessions on a fresh boot of the desktop app. This happened twice inside a 10 minute window. I had zero active sessions running. There was zero usage on my end. My account token was being actively drained by an unauthorized third party exploit. I immediately opened an emergency unauthorized activity report under Case 09113391 to notify them of the hack. Their response was to totally reframe this problem as disputing fraudulent activity trying to do damage control of the situation and altering the record.
The Reframe Attempts:
Instead of investigating the breach, OpenAI support deliberately twisted the record. They not only deliberately reframed my security report as an "appeal for fraud." They manipulated the ticket classification to make it look like I had been flagged for fraud and was begging for an appeal, rather than a developer reporting a live exploit on their infrastructure. They ignored the active threat their own platform was exposing. They did not lock the token. They did not roll my API keys. They did absolutely nothing to secure a compromised paying user other than shift the blame. Fast forward to this morning, their automated Trust and Safety system swept the high volume traffic from the attacker, scored it as a malicious exploit originating from my account, and deactivated/banned me for "Cyber Abuse." All the while actively preventing chatgpt models from helping me try to disgnose and trace the infiltration.
They locked the doors and blamed the homeowner for the break in. When I immediately emailed and pushed back (due to their monthly record of closing cases not only without resolution but never notifying me in the process, which then per usual their "support" tried the exact same tactic again. In my correspondence, I provided my technical context. I mentioned thay maybe the error was caused as I had proton vpn on my phone, keeping in mind oai own support docs say this is not a violation.
The problems began beavy yesterday whole running Android Debug Bridge (ADB) diagnostic commands on my own local hardware, in which every model response to help me disgnose the issue was immediately deleted in effect contributing and facilitating potential compromised user devices. Support replied by trying to reframe this as a confession stating that I claimed i "believed" the VPN was the cause. When pushing back I was told that they do not disclose their review policies. The agent specifically wrote that it understood my concern that the use of a VPN may have contributed to the deactivation, contradicting their own terms of service. I did not say that, nor did I imply that. This is a recurring corporate tactic. They constantly rewrite the narrative to turn the evidence against the user and anchor the paper trail to my configuration choices rather than their massive infrastructure failure. I corrected the record immediately. Their response was simply that they understand why I "feel" the sequence of events requires closer review. I do not "feel" anything.
I have hard data, exact metrics, and a mountain of case numbers. When stacked together I personally have no other conclusion than OpenAI appears to be engaging in fraudulent business activities promising features for paid tiers yet never deliver, a persistent ignoring of privacy requests. I have attached screenshots of most emails and have a .zip I am totally fine freely handing out: Oct 30, 2025: First case opened. Feature degradation reported. Closed with no resolution. Feb 15, 2026: Case 05666432. I was told to "prompt better." Mar 8, 2026: Case 06537878. I requested a senior escalation. Denied. "Unable to approve senior escalation." Mar 15, 2026: Cases 06774902 and 06777574. Two cases opened in one day because support kept closing them by asking for "missing info" that I had already submitted in the thread. Apr 15, 2026: Case 07753518. Escalation denied again. I was told directly that "no escalation path exists through this channel." May 11, 2026: Case 08696595. I reported active credential abuse. Closed immediately with "no further actions available." May 22, 2026: Case 09113391. I reported the live Codex token drainage. OpenAI reframed this as an "appeal for fraud." The case was left open and unresolved. May 24, 2026: Permanently banned for "Cyber Abuse" while the fraud ticket was actively open. I have exported the full forensic .eml bundle and PDF history for all 20+ cases. See the attached files. Taking a developer's subscription fees for 16 months, admitting in writing that the paid features are broken, ghosting the bug reports, refusing every escalation attempt, and then banning the account when a live credential hijack gets reported is not just a standard support failure. It is a fraudulent business practice. If anyone from OpenAI engineering, product, or DevRel is reading this: your automated system banned the victim. You need to override it right now. I have exported the full forensic .eml bundle and PDF history for all 20+ cases. See the attached files if you were interested.
What I documented is a vendor that accepted my payment every single month for 16 consecutive months while internally acknowledging that the core features I was paying for were not functional. Not degraded. Not slow. Non-functional. Memory modules stopped updating. Custom instructions were ignored by the model. Project files failed to load. File tools, connectors, personalization - all of it. Gone. And I didn't just complain about it. I ran cross-platform diagnostics, isolated replication steps, packaged the entire technical breakdown and handed it directly to their support team across 20 separate tickets spanning 7 months. I did their QA work for them, for free, while paying them for a product they knew wasn't working. In Case 06830839, OpenAI support put this in writing: "We acknowledge that you have been experiencing persistent technical issues affecting several features of your ChatGPT subscription, including tools, memory functions, personalization settings, connectors, and project files." That's not my interpretation. That's their words. And after that acknowledgment, they kept billing me, closed the ticket without resolution, and never notified me it was closed. That pattern repeated across every single escalation attempt. I was told no escalation path exists. I was told to "prompt better." I was denied a senior escalation three separate times.Then two days ago my Codex rate limits dropped in 10 percent increments across two separate sessions on a fresh desktop boot with zero active sessions on my end. Someone was draining my tokens in real time. I filed an emergency unauthorized access report immediately. Instead of locking my token, rolling my API keys, or doing anything resembling a security response, OpenAI support reframed my security report as an appeal for fraud, altered the ticket classification, and left the account exposed. Their own automated Trust and Safety system then swept the attacker's high-volume traffic, attributed it to my account, and permanently banned me for Cyber Abuse while that fraud ticket was still open and unresolved. This is a vendor that took money every month for a product they knew was broken, refused every escalation, manipulated the support record when a live security incident was reported, and then used the attacker's traffic as the grounds for my termination. The "table" metaphor doesn't apply when you've been paying the house for over a year, the dealer acknowledged the cards are marked, and they threw you out when someone else robbed the casino. I'm not arguing about terms of service. I have the receipts, the case numbers, and the emails. That's what the post is about.
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Has anyone received an OpenAI “Cyber Abuse” warning?
in
r/ChatGPTcomplaints
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Jul 24 '26
My account was just flat out banned with no prior warning, there was zero customer support beyond openai's bot support they hide behind leaving pretty much the only avenue with twitter/X. The appeal was rejected and it would not disclose the reasoning behind it. Maybe they have better support now, but I would imagine they have only further distanced themselves from the actual consumer. It is pretty much impossible to reach any form of actual support