HACKATIME
Fraud & Appeals FAQ
Our job is to ensure fairness on Hackatime, especially for events where prizes are awarded based on coding hours. This page clarifies our policies and process.
TL;DR
What is considered fraud?
In short: logging coding hours when you aren't actively coding. This includes using scripts, auto-typers, or just leaving something on your keyboard. Normal coding practices like using AI, copy-pasting, or debugging are not fraud.
How do I appeal a ban?
If you believe your ban was a mistake, please contact us through the Fraud Department bot or by emailing fraudsquad@hackclub.com. We ask that you be honest in all your communications.
More Detailed Questions
Can you give more detail on what counts as fraud?
On Hackatime, fraud is defined as any attempt to log coding hours when you are not actively working. The key principle is misrepresenting your activity to gain an unfair advantage. Common examples include:
- Using scripts to automatically send activity heartbeats.
- Employing auto-typers or placing objects on your keyboard to simulate typing.
- Modifying Hackatime extensions to report time falsely.
To be clear, many development practices are not fraud. We don't police your workflow. Activities like using AI assistants (e.g., Copilot), copy-pasting code, or spending time debugging are all legitimate parts of coding.
Who is on the fraud team?
To protect the privacy of our team members and prevent them from being messaged directly, we do not publish an official list of the fraud department. Please use official channels for all communication.
How do you detect fraudulent hours?
We use a combination of automated systems and manual review of Hackatime data to detect suspicious patterns. For security reasons, we cannot share the specifics. As our official policy states:
We do not disclose the patterns that were detected. Releasing this information would only benefit fraudsters. The fraud team regularly investigates claims of false bans to increase the effectiveness of our detection systems to combat fraud.
What is the false positive rate for bans?
Our false positive rate is extremely low. Every potential case is manually reviewed by multiple team members to ensure accuracy before any action is taken. While no system is perfect, we are confident that the number of incorrect bans is exceptionally small.