GTA Online: What To Do If Money Is Dropped On You


The Problem

An increasingly common misconception among GTA Online players is that getting money dropped on you by hackers will result in your account being banned. The ban resulting from the sudden increase of cash you're carrying around. However, there are a number of ways to minimize any sort of harm that hackers may inflict upon you when and if this occurs. We've put together a hacker avoidance guide before, but that touched on different topics than this guide.

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Dropped Money ≠ Ban

First of all, getting money dropped on you won't get you banned, and it has never caused false bans. Another misconception is that whether or not you bank the cash actually matters. Some claim banking it will save you from a ban, others that banking it is what causes the ban. Neither are true, because banking the cash makes no difference whatever which way. You're not getting banned for this, period.

MONEY GUIDE CLIPS

Avoid Hackers and Switch Lobbies

One more thing before we proceed: the quickest, safest and overall best way to avoid issues caused by hackers is to simply hop to a different lobby. No method beats this right now. Even though a recent upgrade to the in-game anti-cheat allows for the mid-session banning of hackers, reporting someone won't insta-ban them since that system would be open to abuseby trolls and griefers, especially considering that absolutely every ban is non-negotiable.

However, if for whatever reason you decide to risk it all and stay in a lobby with a hacker, there are some precautions to take. Again, we'd just suggest switching sessions, but hey, some of you folk are off your axels. Sometimes you might meet someone who is a 'nice hacker', someone who doesn't crash the lobby with the spawning of infinite Titans, or doesn't take all your guns away from you.

Roommatehack

Nice Hackers Don’t Exist

First of all, there are no 'nice hackers'. They might not be screwy right now but you can bet that they cocked up other lobbies for kicks before, and will do so again. Any and all forms of hacking are in breach of GTA Online's EULA and ToS, and bans are issued in these cases.

Don’t Enter the Vehicle

Now, while dropping cash on you won't result in the banhammer descending upon you, hackers can get you banned in other ways. A golden rule is never, ever to get into a car with a hacker. A number of hack effects, like god mode, are transferrable this way, meaning if you hop into a car with an invincible player, you'll be invincible too. But without any of the anti-ban precautions these hackers have set up you'll probably tick off the anti-cheat within seconds.

God mode isn't the only effect that is transferrable this way, but all of them will get you banned. The thing with hacking is that for all the masking techniques out there, none are fool-proof and even the best can only buy you time before you're banned. If any of you think it's a great idea to set up a mask of some sort and hop into a hacker's car as an easy way to get an unfair advantage, be warned that you're just signing the death sentence of your account.

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Losing Your Weapons and Ammo

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A common thing to experience is having all of your weapons taken from you by hackers. This particular problem is quickly resolved with a single loading screen, like going to your apartment or something. However, you'll reinitialize without any ammo, even though your weapons are back. Not only does this mean that your carefully cherished firework rockets are adiós, but you can waste a bunch of cash on buying it back.

We risk repeating ourselves, but here, session hopping is your best best. Even if you're stuck it out with the hackers up to this point, unless you want to waste hard earned money on ammo you never fired, switch sessions as quickly as possible. Dallying too much will make the issue 'set', but if you're swift you'll load into the new lobby with all of your weapons and ammo on you.

Beat the Titan Spawners

Evidence for this next tip is anecdotal at best, but hey, if it works for just one guy out of ten, it's still helping (and with the number of players playing GTA Online, one out of ten is still almost a million a week). When a hacker begins to crash the lobby with infinite prop spawning, turn your in-game field of view to the ground as quickly as possible and try to switch session before it boots you out.

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The idea is that even though the props will exist within the game world, the hardware will be less taxed - this can even be tested on mid-range PCs ambiently. Have an FPS counter on, look out into the distance so many objects need to be rendered. Then look down right at the ground, and you'll get significantly better framerates due to the fewer objects.

Sometimes, hackers will spawn props into your character model that persist after several lobby switches. In these cases, a full reboot of the system is suggested, though simply switching to singleplayer then back to multiplayer also works most of the time. We have yet to hear of this causing a ban. However there is a likelihood of having an altered player model trip the anti-cheat, so for your safety we'd suggest rebooting your system entirely.

Avoid Their Gear

Another way to avoid bans is to not interact with hacker-spawned vehicles or other items. Occasionally you'll meet an alleged 'nice hacker' who spawns a dozen Duke O'Deaths into the lobby for players to have fun with. Except the hack is kind of like a virus that spreads from carseats. Like sharing a car with a hacker, sitting in a hacked car is like painting a target on your colluding ass.

If this is you, you're part of the problem

Don’t Beg

Speaking of collusion, there is one thing that is rarely spoken of but does cause bans. See, people can't only report hackers, but people who outright ask for cash. Chat-log screencaps of you polishing gizzard for easy money (since money drops don't cause bans) are all Rockstar Support needs to let loose the dogs of ban to feast upon your greedy shins.

Stay Informed

If you've possibly, even inadvertently, done anything stated above to put you at risk of a ban but haven't been banned yet (and are actually, genuinely innocent), we'd suggest keeping an eye on the forums. Usually whenever there is a banwave, pissed hackers whine about it in drove so they are hard to miss. Ban waves themselves come in smaller sub-waves, and if you're not caught by the first, staying offline for a while might save your account.

Final Thoughts

That said, none of this is a guarantee. For your own safety, just burn the lobby-hopping suggestion into your mind and use it as your go-to method for hacker avoidance. If you're ever in a situation where you're tempted to stay in a lobby with a hacker, just ask yourself whether risking your account, and all progress on it, is worth it all.

This is an original guide created by GTA BOOM. Review our full research, verification and publishing process here. Full recordings of our guides are on our YouTube channel.

40 Comments

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  1. This guide has a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of the netcode of GTA V and therefor gets almost everything wrong in this guide. No, you cant recieve god mode or any other similar effects by getting into the car of a modder. Some stats are written by the server in real time and those can be manipulated by a modder. God mode, health, etc are not in those stats and are all client side. Thats why you cant even get into a modded car and get its effects even with the modder in the car with you. The only things a modder can do is drop money or weapons onto you, spawn objects on you to prevent you from being able to move (and if you were hit while animating, you cant even pause), change your RP level, or kick you out. No other things can be done to your character by a modder.

  2. Alright, i might be paranoid, but i have alot of cool stuff on my account, and a hacker dropped me 2k. OK, ok, ok, maybe a stupid question, but can i get banned because im really worried

    1. No monsoon you won’t if it’s something like 2k you don’t need to worry about it if it’s like 50,000 then yeah that’s something to worry about but your good.

  3. Recently some hacker dropped like 200k over me, I couldn't report him fast enough and in the support website there's nothing related to that kind of stuff. Do you know how could I contact the support, so they can help me and I can also avoid a banhammer?

  4. Is rockstar didn't make literally everything 3 to 4 million dollars money drops wouldn't be a thing and shark cards would be worth it. Sure it's unfair for someone to be a modder and another to not be a modder, but many mod menus are free and they are simply on a website that is easily accessed so really anyone can be a modder if they really want to. Rockstar shouldn't really be this strict about mods, GTA roleplay is literally a mod that makes the game better than it was and it has become more popular than the game itself and if they were to allow mods in online sessions the game would become more popular which would get rockstar more money and more players and then they will have enough money to make their next game epic and then allow mods and the process would repeat.

  5. I think it's retarded that a hacker can get you ban and you can't protest for your account shame on you rockstar for blaming your cut rate anti cheat engine on your innocent customers

    1. Ha bro can i have money I have no money and now cars and it will make my day can i get 2millon my gamar tag is platonicfools i play on ps4

  6. please can you give me data on ps4 gta 5, 1 150 000 000 money, I get bored there and can not do heisty because she does not want to connect to m

  7. *Wont get banned*, yeah don't think so, on my old 360 gta online account a random hacker gave me 3+billion dollars and I got banned about 5 hours later despite having proof I didn't hack or ask for the money. I was more fortunate recently though as i've started gtao again on my PS4 and as soon as I spawned in properly for the first time I got give 1Billion dollars, thankfully I contacted Rockstar and they removed the money but didnt ban me.

  8. And yet I have spent 3 hours in the game and hacked 23 trillion dollars and got a ban XD best 3 hours of my life tho

  9. Thank you for the clarification. I've been reporting hackers- and talking smack to let them know they are not welcome in the game with me- virtually every single day I play. I sure hope something gives here and I can enjoy this game free of all these shameless, disrespectful cheaters, once and for all. I don't mind the jackasses who play Santa Claus, and I didn't think getting the money against your will could possibly cause someone to get in trouble.

    But you're right, all of them are dirty rotten scoundrels, and I've had it up to here with that endless magic roll and players who are lightning fast and don't give you any chance to hit them.

    I was wondering if you have any advice for how to keep them out of the deathmatches I've created? I specifically posted "clean players only," but I still had to repeatedly ask a guy to leave, as the kicks don't always work. I really just want to have a clean game with other respectful players.

Aron Gerencser
In the site's early beginnings, Aron was responsible for the bulk of the news posts that you'd find on GTA BOOM each and every day. He loves getting involved with the community and is an avid fan of all things Rockstar Games. Since then, Aron has become an editor across all the content that is posted on GTA BOOM. His journey with the franchise began with GTA 2 back when it was new (all the way back in 1999), and he was a gamer even before then. Graduating summa cum laude from Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi with a BA in Media Production, Aron has been a game journalist since 2014. When not writing, editing or playing, Aron is building models which you can find on Instagram and Facebook.