What is a Ricochet Shadowban in Call of Duty?
If you launch Call of Duty: Warzone or Modern Warfare and notice that matchmaking searches endlessly before placing you in lobbies with 350ms+ ping filled with other suspicious accounts, your profile has been placed in an Under Review quarantine state (commonly known as a Shadowban).
Activision proprietary Ricochet Anti-Cheat uses shadowbans as an automated triage mechanism. Instead of issuing an immediate permanent ban, suspicious accounts are segregated into isolated matchmaking pools while server-side machine learning models review player telemetry.
How IP Reputation & Network Switching Trigger Shadowbans
While gameplay reports and abnormal statistical spikes contribute to reviews, network telemetry and IP trust scores play a massive role in automated flagging:
- Rapid Geolocation Jumps: Logging in from New York at 2:00 PM and Frankfurt at 2:30 PM (caused by aggressive VPN location switching) immediately triggers an account security flag.
- Data Center / Commercial Proxy IPs: Ricochet server telemetry identifies when an IP belongs to a commercial data center (AWS, DigitalOcean) rather than a legitimate residential ISP. Read our comparison of residential vs datacenter proxy classifications.
- High-Abuse Subnet Flagging: If another banned player on your shared ISP subnet recently committed severe infractions, the entire subnet trust score may temporarily degrade.
How Long Does a Ricochet Shadowban Last?
Standard automated shadowban reviews typically last between 5 to 7 business days. During this window, automated server heuristics analyze:
- Historical kill-to-death ratios and headshot velocity distributions.
- Input device telemetry (detecting unauthorized remapping hardware or scripting macros).
- Kernel driver integrity stamps submitted by the local Ricochet PC module.
Best Practices to Maintain a Clean Account Trust Score
- Play on a Stable Residential Connection: Avoid rapidly toggling VPN server regions while the Battle.net or Steam client is actively authenticated.
- Check Your IP Threat Reputation: Verify if your public IP is flagged as a proxy or hosting gateway on our free IP risk score tool.
- Unlock Advanced Telemetry: Explore our comprehensive network diagnostic tools on the Cyber Shield PRO portal.