Got banned from mega due to massive overhead

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

Got banned from mega - 402 response when trying to make daily automatic backups. It was ok for almost 2 years, i didn't configure anything different.
Actual rclone version used is 1.67.0 on ubuntu server 24.04, before upgrading the O.S. i used 22.04.
Then i contacted their support asking for clarifications and this was their reply:


Thank you for contacting MEGA support.
Our database shows that your account has created many sessions with rclone which is an unauthorised third party tool. This tool is not developed or authorised by MEGA and therefore not recommended.

MEGA does limit your session creations if your account is starting too many.

Users using rclone to access their MEGA account runs into such problem sooner or later as rclone is based on a cobbled-together third-party MEGA API client library that just barely works (lack of thumbnails, undecrypted shared folders and so on).

The relevant bug with that client library (or the way rclone uses it) is the absence of session caching, which means that every invocation of rclone creates a fresh session, with all the overhead of validating your password etc.


This slows down its operation unnecessarily and accumulates sessions up to a point where it reaches our - extremely generous - limit of concurrently active sessions.

At that point, as you have experienced, our API rejects further login attempts.

You can mitigate this issue by mounting the remote with rclone mount. This will log-in when mounting and a log-out when unmounting only.

You can also run rclone rcd and then use rclone rc to run the commands over the API to avoid logging in each time.

Alternatively, you can submit a bug report to the authors of rclone and/or the client library to add session caching. Once that is fixed, it will work.

However, we do not recommend any third-party tools because they are insecure and do not fully implement our cryptographic protocols; also they cannot detect your quota and could limit your bandwidth.

We recommend the migration to our command tool MEGA CMD which provides access to MEGA services without user interface and offers all the functionality of your MEGA account via commands.

Please find more information about it in our help centre: https://help.mega.io/installs-apps/command-line/cmd and also here: https://github.com/meganz/MEGAcmd

You can install it from this link: https://mega.nz/cmd

PLEASE NOTE:

MEGAcmd is not a tool intended to be used by all users, we only recommend this tool to advanced users like yourself.

welcome to the forum,

everything you posted is well known, documented and discussed many times in the forum.
and there are several workarounds for you to choose from.

what bug?
afaik, rclone is working as designed.

i didn't find anything of the issue what mega support is talking about.
Also, what's the purpose of the docs on Mega if after x amount of time you get banned, there's nothing written in the docs (only the "workaround")? I never made "heavy use" of rclone, just a backup once a day.

everyone is welcome to edit and propose changes to the rclone docs.
click the pencil icon at mega.md

there are three workarounds that i know about:

  1. rclone mount
  2. rclone rcd
  3. run megacmd in webdav mode, then create a rclone remote for that webdav server.
    in this case, mega official software handles the logins and file transfers.

Looks like similar issue started for many other users recently:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MEGA/comments/1hmefp9/unable_to_login_using_megacmd_hangs/

Does not look like it is rclone related only and affect mega own tools too.

Exactly. As said, i never had any issues in almost 2 years. Then suddenly i got a 402 error (payment required). Time ago i read somewhere that if you don't login as a human for an x amount of time free accounts get banned. Who knows if it's true or not, i don't have the time to verify such stuff.
Also, I don't want to mess around with rclone settings if i'm not sure that the issue lies on rclone itself. If there would have been an issue with rclone i suppose i would they would have banned me much earlier, not after 2 years.

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