Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V

113 ratings
Protecting yourself from Cheaters Online 7/28/24
By 1984
Explains what to do to avoid being harmed by cheaters via the means provided by the game and social club itself.
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Preface
Menus generally exploit features that are in game. If something is not present they cannot add/run that feature/command.

If there were no UFO skins in game, they wouldn't be able to spawn a flying saucer.

If characters were unable to be blown up, then menus wouldn't be able to do that.

If game had no explosive rounds they wouldn't be able to apply them on all weapons.

If you weren't able to join friends at leisure they wouldn't be able to exploit invite-join system.


Therefore, there is a number of steps you can take in order to block/reduce menu functionality against you and try stop harassing cheaters from annoying you daily.
Setting Privacy and Game Settings as Me Only
First set of steps would be to make yourself private on both social club and in-game. Some privacy features are only accessible from the game itself by pressing HOME menu on your keyboard to open in-game social club.

You want cheaters to have least possible amount of information on you, that is why you need to hide yourself from random players (which they are a part of).

Press "Home" on keyboard. It will open in-game social club. And click on Settings from drop down menu on the top right.



Go over to Privacy Settings on left side menu and select every single option there as "ME ONLY", make sure to scroll down and select them all. Now they won't be able to trace you as effectively.



Go over to Game Settings and put Presence Visibility as ME ONLY too. It will hide your online presence in the game from cheaters and they won't be able to track when you are playing the game on their menus.



This will reduce your visibility to friends as well, you will enter a stealth mode of sorts and people will not see you online. If you want your friends to be able to invite you, you will need to set it back to friends only, but I suggest you return it to me only after you're done playing with them so no cheater can exploit this.
Blocking
Whenever you see a mod menu user in-game block them on social club. That reduces chances of you joining a lobby with them again (or any blocked user) and also makes sure they cannot follow or drag you session to session, harassing you repeatedly.

Press "ESC">ONLINE>PLAYERS



Click on the name of a player who you suspect is a modder or know is a modder for sure and choose Show Profile (there will be a couple more options like kick or report that you can use after you block them but some cheaters can see if you report them and can become angry with you, some can block reports too so it might not be the best idea. and kick only works if a lot of people from session will join in, or might not work at all)



This will take you over to their social club where you need to click on the tree dots beside Player Actions and choose Block. Volia! You've blocked the cheater. Now you are safer but I would advise against triggering them and they can still toy with you in session. So you can find a new one if you want. They won't follow.

Solo/Limited Player Lobbies
Sometimes, if you are being stalked in public lobbies or don't want to be in danger of encountering griefers or cheaters you can start your own private lobbies. There are various lobbies like Crew or Friends only.

But there are even more secure private lobbies. Albeit in Solo lobby things you can do are more limited. So I prefer Invite only lobby. It is practically like a solo lobby with more activities to do. And loading times are faster since you don't need to connect to other players.

To start, launch the game into Story Mode (singleplayer campaign)

Once in Story Mode, press ESC>ONLINE>PLAY GTA Online



Then either choose invite only or solo lobby



If you are already playing in a public lobby you can escape to these lobbies as well. You can either return to Story Mode and do what i said above or you can start creator



In Creator press P (for pause)



And you will see this menu, and just repeat steps from PLAY GTA Online



There is also a way to make a Public lobby devoid of players, that allows you to do most content in the game alone but after a while it will start to fill up, and cheaters have a way of following you there as it is not solo or invite only. It is still Public.

If you want to know the way to make a Public solo lobby you will need to search for it on the web.
Social Club Friendlist & Crews
If you are constantly being bother by cheaters it could be you have one or two modders in your Friendlist on Social Club

Best thing to do is to keep track of who your friends are and remove random people you added overtime, and not add someone you don't really plan on playing with.

I had a person I met on GTA Discord play a heist with me and then harass me a few days later after it was done using a mod menu. I promptly blocked them and removed all people I don't play with and had no problem since.

Use the link below to get to social club friends, and insert your social club name to get to your own friendlist

https://socialclub.rockstargames.com/member/insert_your_name_here/friends

But don't forget about Crews, Crews can have anywhere between 1-1000 players and you can join multiple crews. So that means 1000s of players can randomly join you, some of them can be cheaters or griefers. Better not to join huge crews, or crews that you don't really associate with. Best to have a crew of close friends and that is it. Definitely joining a crew of 1000 people is more risky than 100. Unless of course all 100 are cheaters and it is a cheater crew.

https://socialclub.rockstargames.com/member/insert_your_name_here/crews
General Advice
Try avoiding attacking cheaters, killing them over and over, talking smack to them on social club or in-game chat. That will likely trigger them into doing something mean to you or even stalking you game to game.

However, tips I mentioned before will reduce their presence. You can also block cheaters via ip address on router but if they have a dynamic one it won't help. You can also whitelist sessions and friends like that.

There are even third party tools for that but I don't advice it as Rockstar ToS and EuLA is against that and one day they might be counted as cheat software and your accounts can be reset, even if that soft just advertises themselves as firewalls.

Avoid actively provoking cheaters. If you see a player with rank 4000-8000 it might be a good idea to avoid them also.
Known Abilities
They have a vast arsenal of things they can do, I will list some of them here:

- Explode you
- Burn you
- Crash your game
- Copy you
- Copy your car
- Force you out of your car and steal it
- Invincibility
- Explosive Ammo on all guns
- 1 hit kill
- Drag you into their session
- Follow you to your session
- Frame you for killing people
- Send mass amounts of reports against a user
- Block Reports