[General Topics] Oswald Boelcke:
[MENTION=7433684]hurlube[/MENTION] First, please allow me to apologise that it really took a long time until I recognised this thread - and only by accident. XDA has not only 10+M members, it also hosts 3.5M+ threads with 78+M posts. If you count the number of moderators e.g. here and further consider that all moderators are volunteers and do this "job" for free besides their real life, real family and friends, real business and profession, I hope you can understand that there's no possibility at all to actively every thread and post if moderators' support, assistance or guidance is requested somewhere. We clearly depend on the single and all XDA members is this matter.

It's very unlikely that a moderator becomes aware of e.g. your thread unless a member reports the thread or a post via the report function or you mention or quote a moderator (like I did with you [MENTION=7433684]hurlube[/MENTION]). Another possibility is certainly a PM to a moderator but due to the reasons mentioned above it might be that a PM rests in a moderator's inbox unacted for days or weeks.

Now to the subject of this thread itself... Neither I nor my team mates say that the change or the edit of an IMEI is illegal everywhere. If you look at e.g. my post here, I stated with reference to rule no. 9 of the XDA Forum Rules:

I didn't say that change or edit of IMEI is illegal everywhere. There're quite a lot of things that are legal and even encouraged in some countries while being illegal in other countries like freedom of speech and opinion, the right to demonstrate, suicide and active, passive or indirect euthanasia. I think I could most likely extend this list endlessly. Some countries protect authorship, copyright and ownership while in other countries even official agencies support their violation or plagiarism.

I think it's obviously difficult for a private website in the world wide web to follow a right and consistent way. XDA was founded back in 2003 by developers for developers (see xda-developers: The History -Part One-), and I believe this is still the trait of XDA. Allow me to quote the XDA Forum Rules:

We try to support developers and defend their ownership, while simultaneously enforcing GPL and the requirement to give credits when due, and we don't accept warez at all.

On the other hand, we don't want to lose sight of all other XDA members and users for whom we want to provide a platform to ask for help and support, to share opinions and experiences in a friendly, civil and respectful environment.

In order to implement above principles, this private website or platform has brought its own and already quoted forum rules into effect. And regarding the change or the edit of IMEI the XDA stance is like stated in my above linked post: We do not allow any kind of IMEI editing! However, if it's about restoring original IMEI/EFS that's not considered editing/changing hence allowed. And we also allow discussion and support regarding IMEI spoofing or masking as long as it happens on software level and the actual hard-coded board IMEI isn't tampered with. Thus it's allowed to post apps or (Exposed Framework) add-ons with this function that many use due to privacy concerns. But again, for sure we don't accept talks about using it for illegal purpose.

I hope I was able to clarify XDA's stance in this matter. And also allow me a very personal but very important remark to me: I do not censor any thread, and I've never observed that any of my moderator fellows does. But we clean a thread or post from anything that does not comply with the forum rules and always explain to the member whose post was affected the reason why we did that; this occurs most of the time privately by PM's but occasionally also publicly by an announcement in the thread. I really hope that you don't call this censorship!

Last but not least - and I apologise that I've to enforce our rules now as I became aware of your thread: The thread is obviously not related to the Oneplus 8 Pro i.e. I'm moving the thread to the General discussions section.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

Regards

Oswald Boelcke