Have the Admins ever suspended/banned anyone only to find the member had been spoofed or hijacked by person who had unauthorized access to a members account?
For that matter, have there been any unauthorized users spoofing members, that the Admins or the members of the Board are aware of?
Well, there was the “Sex with sheep is fun” thread in which Hal Briston learned not to leave himself logged in (or his computer unlocked) during meetings. I think that counts as “unauthorized users spoofing members.”
By the way, that thread is the top result from a Google search for Hal Briston.
Yeah, but as far as I know, there was never any talk of suspending or banning him for that.
I don’t think it’s happened, no.
I’m sure that if something happened that was monstrous enough to earn an insta-ban (which hardly ever, if ever, happens, it generally takes repeated violations and warnings over a period of time, and you should be able to notice that you’ve been hijacked before the banning happens), you could straighten it all out with an email to TubaDiva.
FWIW, I believe a now-departed Doper tried to mess with another Doper with whom he disagreed by logging into the SDMB under the other screen name, thus getting the password reset to block access. Not quite the same thing, but close.
Regards,
Shodan
How do we know user_hostile started this thread?
“Do they call me Hal Briston the fence builder? No. Do they call me Hal Briston the bridge builder? No. But walk away from your computer for just one minute…” 
I don’t think we’ve ever banned someone under precisely the circumstances described by the OP. If a long time user starts suddenly starts acting out, before we move towards banning, we send them an email to see what’s up. We’ve had a few occasions where we did that, and found out that they had a douchebag brother couch surfing at their place, or something. But, in general, there are enough steps in the process of banning someone that if a user has a compromised account, we find out about it before we shut down their board access.
Some banned posters have claimed that there account was compromised, and weren’t believed. That’s usually a case of a problem poster gradually posting more and more like an asshole until they finally cross the bn line. Theoretically, some of those claims might be legitimate, but I kinda doubt it.
We have done things like mistakenly banning someone because they signed up for their new account at the same time as their roommate or SO, and we thought they were socks. And, occasionally, we ban a range of IPs we think is used exclusively by spammers, and accidentally catch a legitimate user. In those cases, an email to an admin can get things straightened out in two shakes.
I believe he’s also mentioned by name in TV Tropes.
There’s been a few times over the years when people’s accounts have been used by others.
Besides the infamous Hal Briston incident, not a lot but occasionally it happens.
I don’t remember that we’ve actually banned a poster for it. We may have suspended activity on that account while we straightened things out.
Mostly it’s been kids posting under their parents screen names, that happens from time to time and is the most common situation we see under these conditions.
Any kid pull a Hal Briston?
Not that we know of. Usually how it’s played out is that we see Poster X exhibiting some non-Poster X behavior … not sounding like themselves.
It gets straightened out. 
There was a poster about 10 years ago or so, I believe user name Oat Willie, who managed to spoof other people’s accounts by registering under the almost exact same user name, only adding a space at the end or something which would of course not be evident to other readers.
For example, if he wanted to spoof me, he’d register an account as user name "divemaster ". Posts from this fake "divemaster " would appear to be coming from “divemaster”
All sorts of havoc was wreaked until the admins figured out what was going on and implemented countermeasures.
I’m sure this Oat Willie (or whomever it was) was banned.
We had another multiple returnee who used to do this. His main targets were samclem and Frank, but he also signed up marley23@gmail.com and marley23@alumni.com, for example.
In all fairness, that was hilarious.
What about unintentional spoofing? Do we have cases where a member is ostracized by the admins for bad behavior, only to find out through other channels that mental illness was responsible for the member’s aberrant behavior?
I’m not looking for specifics; just a yes or no with the briefest explanation. (I see no reason to rehash someone’s mistakes because of their break with reality).
Yes, that was me with the douchebag brother. I didn’t even have any idea any it happened until someone mentioned it to me when I was back online and posting away normally, not having even checked the email account I use for SDMB.
First off, we do not “ostracize” anyone for "bad behavior. "
I agree with you, we shouldn’t revisit where people have had adverse situations. What does it serve to call them out when they were ill and could not help themselves? Not necessary and cruel, even.
Of course it has happened in the past; most of these incidents were well publicized at the time. We dealt with them as the serious issues that they were and we have all moved on.
If we see that someone is having problems we look into the situation. Sometimes they just need to sober up, or see about medication (take less, take more, get changed) … sometimes they need a break from the board. We’re sensitive to needs. Every situation is different and is evaluated and dealt with as needs be.
Thanks for the answers from all.
FWIW, my use of “ostracized” & “bad behavior” was a terse substitute for “suspension”/“banned” for “violating board rules.” Rereading the definition of the former word indicates that it was too strident. :o .
Nothing implied or inferred … no harm, no foul.
Oh, yeah. Like that entire week in 2009 that I made nothing but relevant and insightful posts.
I think I got emails from like 4 different mods asking what was up. 