Have you ever felt like you were living Groundhog Day after a ban? You buy a new account, start up your favorite shooter, and—bam!—another ban pop-up appears. Groundhog Day without the charm. If you’re nodding, you know how bad it is to have your hardware banned. People who are locked in that cycle have found “hwid spoofer that works” to be their knight in shining armor. But it can be hard to discover one that really works, like looking for a four-leaf clover in a field of wheat.

Let’s stop using jargon for a minute. HWID stands for hardware ID, which is like a “digital fingerprint” for your PC. To keep cheaters away, gaming firms put hardware bans in place, but sometimes innocent people get caught in the crossfire. A good HWID spoofer hides your real fingerprint and gives your PC a “alias” so it can’t be found. In principle, it’s easy. In practice, a minefield.

There are a lot of bogus tales and snake oil salespeople on the internet. Many spoofers make big promises, but they really just send your computer to crash city or worse—put you back on the ban list. The real deal should be able to fake the IDs of your motherboard, hard drive, GPU, and network adapter without raising any alarms. You can’t miss one.

Looking for the nice things? Here are some tried-and-true tips. Spoofers live or die by updates. The spoofer has to keep up with the game developers’ wild patching of their detection systems. Spoofers that haven’t been updated in months or have support forums full of postings saying “help please, banned again” are big red flags. Hint: Stay away unless you like playing digital whack-a-mole.

Follow your gut (and conduct some spying). Look for small, private groups that are going crazy about certain spoofers. You could be onto something if the talk sounds real and not like a tacky ad. Watch out for those big Discord servers or websites that offer “lifetime” deals for the price of your lunch. If it sounds strange, it probably is.

Don’t forget how easy it is to use. Some fake people want you to create code or do a lot of other things. If you don’t enjoy a challenge, choose those with one-click interfaces. No one wants to spend their night going through error logs when they could be playing games.

There is always a chance of risk. If you rage or cheat in a blatant way, even good spoofers can be found. It’s important to fly beneath the radar. And whatever you do, don’t put more than one cheat tool on top of another. That will definitely lead to trouble.

Just a quick reminder: don’t ever download anything from URLs that look suspicious or from “underground” sites that you don’t know about. It’s not worth it to mess up your PC with malware or worse. Look at everything. Check with people who have used the spoofer in the last few weeks, not just once.

There is no guide about how to find a working HWID spoofer. Instead of dazzling ads, you should rely on community talk, how often they update, and a little plain old-fashioned cynicism. If you keep your expectations in check, you can avoid the worst problems. Have fun with your second chance at gaming, but don’t brag about it in global chat.