Quit and came back, perma-banned.

After a brief look at other topics here, I figured this might be the only place where I can get this off my chest. I've been around on and off since LoL first came out and it became the only moba that I could play, because frankly... Heroes of Newerth was crap (first 5 games got kicked 5 times for not knowing how to play). Now about a year and some months ago, I played League seriously after a few friends of mine pitched the idea of joining a team, maybe going pro (retrospect: what a stupid idea). Exciting stuff, considering I'm a scrub, and my friends wanted to give me a chance! But I sucked and so they told me no can do. Oh well, you miss all the shots you don't take.

So this ended about 10 months ago. I had a mentor, a static group, some of the best games I'll never play again. But I burned out regardless. Being told I wasn't good enough tends to do that, so I stopped playing. Then, I come back just recently (a few hours ago), with no more delusions of playing amateur, pro, or other nonsense. Turns out I was banned while I wasn't looking. So I talk to a support rep. They tell me it's third party software! Wow, I was expecting toxic behavior! I didn't always keep my mouth shut in-game and I hear typing anything resembling English is taboo around these parts. (91% kidding)

I dug through my inbox and, yeah, I found the email. Sent Dec 2017, at about 5 or so days after I quit (I had no idea Riot sent me a Christmas present, haha). It asked me to dispute the action and it didn't say anything about perma-ban then. Looks like I blew it. Learned my lesson about emails today, read everything stamped with "Riot" on it (well... except the stuff from youtube about politics). Funny thing, following the perma-ban are like 10 or so emails asking me to come back and to check out all the stuff I missed. Maybe I'm the only one that laughs at automatic emails.

So, I can imagine the moment 3rd party gets mentioned, I'm guilty because everyone hates filthy hackers.

I didn't hack (humor me) and generally the app I use with the game is Discord. So I tried to dig into why it is that I got banned and there's little the support rep could tell me. I took a stab in the dark and mentioned I use wireshark for work (a packet and network analyzer, figured maybe I left it running) and well nothing came of that. Support apparently can't share any details as to how/who/where/when/what could have triggered it. Out of all my dev tools (eclipse, mongodb, owasp zap, etc) wireshark is only one I could imagine might have flagged something. I also ran LoL on Linux using Wine but I was under the impression people have been doing that for years. If anyone has insight on this, advice is appreciated.

The other thought was that, maybe, I was reported by a player who thought I was hacking. There's been a few times when people say "wow" and "wtf" as I fat-finger my way through something that looks like good technique. In my defense, I had a mentor on my ear barking orders at me. What I lack in cognitive intelligence I more than make up for with the need to comply with what a voice in my head (phones) tells me.

Sorry about the long winded post. The shock hasn't really settled yet, but I figured maybe getting some feedback might do me some good. The prospect of re-buying all my champions is migraine-inducing.