A hardware ban attaches to a machine, not a person — and that simple fact causes a genuinely unfair problem on shared computers.
How one ban catches everyone
Imagine a family PC used by two siblings. One of them cheats in a game and earns a hardware ban. The game records the machine's identifiers. Now the other sibling's completely separate, innocent account logs in from the same PC — and the anti-cheat sees the banned fingerprint. The innocent account can be flagged too.
It is not a bug
This is not a malfunction. The anti-cheat is doing exactly what a hardware ban is designed to do: block the machine so a banned user cannot just switch accounts. It has no way to know that the new account belongs to a different person. The fairness gap is built into the concept.
Where it shows up most
Shared-PC bans surface in households with one gaming computer, in shared student housing, and on second-hand PCs whose previous owner was banned. The common thread is several people — or several owners — behind a single hardware fingerprint.
What you can actually do
If an innocent account is caught this way, the route is an honest appeal: open a support ticket, explain that the PC is shared, and be specific about who plays what. Publishers do see these cases. It helps to be upfront early rather than after several denied appeals.
The takeaway
A hardware ban cannot tell people apart — only machines. On a shared PC that is a real risk, and the only honest remedy is a clear, early appeal that explains the situation to the publisher directly.