So, onwards to the ToS, which now contains the following after the change:

8. You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of another player, group of players, character or NPC entity.
...

8. You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer.

So who decides whether I represent a player group or not?

Say I go around offering to sell PL mercenary contracts even though I'm not an in game member of PL. If I get petitioned now a GM has to go find someone in PL and check whether I was actually authorized to sell (or attempt to sell, or scam by pretending to sell) PL mercenary contracts. Which person do you ask? Do I need to get permission from the CEO of the holding alliance? If not does the GM then have to check the line member I got permission from wasn't misrepresenting themselves as someone able to give me permission to sell PL mercenary contracts?

What if PL retroactively decides I'm awesome for scamming people by selling fake merc contracts? Do I still get banned?

Where does Customer Support draw the line for impersonation?
As much as we'd love to be able to draw a clear line, it is quite impossible.

To be honest it's even more troubling that these insane interpretations of the rules were the status quo, and only didn't come to light because nobody was crazy enough to petition someone who said they were an alt of someone else when they actually were.

I read "we may take punitive action against you if you represent another one of your own characters via another character."

You can't be serious. So if I allow this account to lapse because I do not intend to use it for a while, I literally cannot handle any in-game business through another character without risking a potential ban? Stop trying to claim that this is not a policy change, because it clearly is, and it's a really bad one.

Yeah, I tend to agree. Can we get someone more senior in CCP to chime in here? This has descended into bizzaro land at this point.

If the current situation stays, you will have the duty of proving your alt is indeed the alt of Andski for example.

From CCP's point, it's probably "If you can't provide a proof that you are the alt of X, how do you expect other people to find if you really are his alt?

More work to be done on your side than on the other side to be safe.

From CCP's point, it's probably "If you can't provide a proof that you are the alt of X, how do you expect other people to find if you really are his alt?

Except for the part this has been happening for many years now. People EVEMAIL the main going "is this really you?" you reply and all is well. This is standard operating procedure for many forms of business in EVE.

It seems the GM team has no concept of how to actually play EVE and is shooting from the HIP making things up as they go.

by evemailing his main, just like any sane person would think was the proper way to verify

This thread makes me want to reg an alt,
name it Solstice Project's Alt and move it to Hek.

Then I'll run around pretending to be me on the Alt,
while at the same time denying it on my main.

by evemailing his main, just like any sane person would think was the proper way to verify

Yeah, I tend to agree. Can we get someone more senior in CCP to chime in here? This has descended into bizzaro land at this point.

Or if there has to be an attempt to deceive, did you just ban the standard practice of having a character apply to corps that you're wardeccing? Are safari characters gone now? Spies?

Read Andski's example that I quoted. Can a lapsed account reply to EVEMAIL?

He's absolutely right that, taken at face value, that language has profound reverberations through the game.

This is the assumption of "alt" being on a different account.

This is false.

An alt (if you use that word) is one of the additional character slots on the same account.

A second account is a second account and has nothing to do with the first account.

Therefore, if you are an alt of a main, you have the same amount of access to evemail accountwide.

So no, you could not reply to the evemail, because you could not log into the game or the forums or have any other way of knowing there was an evemail (unless 3rd party comms like ts3/vent/mumble.

If I claim to be part of the group goonswarm but I'm actually part of ncdot, that's impersonating a group. oh **** son, spies are now petition-able. Wait till digi hears!