This is a guide to help people avoid being banned from GTA5 Online.

(If this guide was of interest to you, then please rate it upwards.)

Don't mod or hack - this piece of advice should be fairly obvious, but here it is anyway.

If you mod the game in a cheating fashion (such as giving yourself loads of money, weapons, and vehicles) so you can shoot down and/or out-perform other players in multiplayer games, then you deserve to be banned.

However, if you mod the game in a non-cheating fashion (for instance, for purely cosmetic purposes, such as skin changes), you should still expect to be banned.

Rightly or wrongly, Rockstar don't want their game to be modded.

Hackers are a curse in multiplayer games; so, if they get banned, then that's good for the game.

Apparently, some hackers delight in going into servers and going up to players and throwing money onto them, which then gets automatically added to their accounts.

If this happens to you, then don't use any of the money whatsoever.
Report the incident to Rockstar, and they should then delete the money from your account.

It might even be best to stop playing GTA5 as soon as such an incident happens.
Rockstar have a very poor reputation for dealing with modder and hacker problems - if you play on, and Rockstar think you're a hacker, then you could be banned.
I know that it isn't fair, or that it should be able to be dealt with by using a little bit of common sense, but when you're dealing with Rockstar, fairness and common sense are often missing.

It's better to be safe than sorry.

I've been told that some years ago players were being banned from Call Of Duty for hacking, where the problem was that hackers entering a server would actually change the server's software, which would then identify all of the players in that session as hackers.

It is possible that the same thing has been happening on the GTA5 servers.
However, we don't know for sure if that has actually happened or not.

I was once in a multiplayer motorbike race, but there was one guy there who was driving a car - in a motorbike race! It's odds-on that he was a hacker (rather than the server having a glitch).
Some time afterwards, I was banned from GTA5 Online (even though I'm a vanilla player).
Of course, I don't know if that is the reason I got banned or not, because Rockstar refuses to discuss game bans.

It's better to be safe than sorry.
If you see a hacker in a game (e.g. someone driving a car in a motorbike race, someone flying through the air without a plane, etc.), then quit the session straight away.

Some of my friends let me win some car races (they said it was something to do with levelling up my driving skill level, so that I could do a mission with them).

However, doing so can give you several wins in a row in multiplayer races, which the Rockstar software could possibly misidentify as being from hacking.
Of course, we don't know if that is the case or not, because Rockstar refuses to discuss game bans.

It's better to be safe than sorry.
So don't allow people to let you win.

One of my friends had designed several race tracks for GTA5. We played one of the race tracks a few times, which was quite good fun.
When my friends left, I did several more races, to improve my skills on that track.
The race track was publicly available, but since it had to be downloaded separately and was little-known, very few people had the track, and so no-one else joined me.

Whilst you aren't credited with wins towards your total for racing achievements when you race by yourself, the fact is that if you have a streak of wins, the Rockstar computer could see that you've had an inordinate number of wins on a multiplayer race track, which the Rockstar software could possibly misidentify as being from hacking.
Of course, we don't know if that is the case or not, because Rockstar refuses to discuss game bans.

I "won" many races whilst racing on a racetrack by myself just for fun; however, I suspect that doing so got me banned from GTA5 Online.

It's better to be safe than sorry.
So don't drive in a race if you are the only one there.

If you join a multiplayer race, and no-one else joins you, I would advise you to just quit the session straight away.

I have seen players complaining that Rockstar had wiped money from their account after they had played on a bonus money weekend.

If that is true, then possibly the Rockstar anti-cheat software hadn't been configured to take into account bonus money, and instead misidentified the extra money as being from modding or hacking.

I'm surprised that Rockstar only deleted their money, rather than banning them.

Who knows what can happen with Rockstar?
Their anti-cheat software has made so many mistakes, that no-one with a lick of sense can trust it.

If you want to be safe, rather than sorry, I would suggest that you don't play on bonus days.

With GTA5 Online, your first ban is for 30 days, and then your second ban is a permanent ban.

If you are unfairly banned, you can:

1) Report it to Rockstar.
Don't submit your report in the category dealing with bans, and make sure you don't mention the word "ban" or "banned" in your submission, because you will get a computer-generated auto-response telling you that all bans are final. Nor will Rockstar discuss the reason for your ban.
You can reasonably expect that Rockstar won't be of any help to you - but some people have been unbanned, so it's worthwhile giving it a try.

2) Report it on the Rockstar forums.
However, doing so will only result in some people commiserating with you, plus a few trolls declaring that you deserved to be banned because you must be a hacker (in gaming, you can expect trolls who delight in the misfortune of others - generally, they are just immature people who have yet to attain some wisdom in life).
The Rockstar forums won't be of any help to you.

3) Give Rockstar a phone call.
Actually, I'm not sure if you can call them now, as some numbers were cancelled, due to the thousands of people complaining after they had received incorrect bans from Rockstar.

Or, you can just suck up the pain and anger, and simply move on to another game which doesn't have such atrociously incompetent anti-cheat software, or such an awful reputation for customer service (or lack thereof).

I have read of some people who have been incorrectly banned from GTA5, who have talked about buying the game again and playing it with another account.
For the love of God, don't reward Rockstar's atrocious behaviour by giving them more money.
Just avoid their game, and move on to something else.

On my Steam profile, I had (for a long time) a screenshot of a hacker driving a car in a motorbike race, where I posed the question as to whether that hacker caused Rockstar bans.
Then I decided that it was time to move on; but, rather than just replace that screenshot, I thought I would use it as part of a guide to help other people - so that hopefully they wouldn't be incorrectly perma-banned from GTA5 Online like I was.

However, if you do get perma-banned, try not to dwell on it; just find a better game, and say goodbye to GTA5.