How not to lose your account on Prolific, Userlytics and others: the rules people break most

Why platforms are so strict

A platform sells researchers one thing: answers from real people who match the description. If a profile says “Poland, 30, accountant” and someone else in another country is answering, the researcher’s data is spoiled and they have paid for nothing. That is why the checks are mostly automated and look for consistency: country, network address, device, PayPal account and answer speed.

Prolific says openly that it does not share the specific reasons for a hold, because that would teach people how to get around its protections. So it is safer not to probe the limits and simply stay well away from them.

What most often gets an account put on hold

Prolific publishes a list of common reasons for putting an account on hold. It is not exhaustive, but it shows a logic that most platforms share.

• you are physically in a different country from the one on your account
• you take studies through a VPN or a similar tool
• your PayPal is not from your country of residence, or is already linked to another Prolific account
• you entered a date of birth by mistake that makes you look under 18
• you failed an identity check
• you have a high number of rejected submissions
• you created several accounts or share an account with someone
• you gave false information about your identity, location or experience
• you complete studies with AI or other automation without permission
• you buy or sell accounts, or game the platform to earn more

Country, VPN and PayPal: the trap for people who have moved

For Ukrainians abroad this is the most important section. Prolific ties an account to your country of residence: your phone number, PayPal and the place you log in from all need to match. If you have moved permanently, contact support with your full new address, switch your PayPal to the new country first, and be ready to verify again with documents from the new country.

If you are abroad temporarily, on holiday, you should not change your details, and you can still cash out. But Prolific plainly warns that taking studies while travelling, or through a VPN, will most likely get your account put on hold. If you move back to a country Prolific does not support, and Ukraine is not on its list, you will not be able to keep taking part.

Sometimes Prolific detects a VPN you do not have. Possible causes are a workplace, university or public Wi-Fi network, iCloud Private Relay on Apple devices, privacy browser extensions, or the wrong date, time or location on your device. The platform suggests switching to your home network or mobile data, turning off such extensions and Private Relay, and clearing your browser cache.

PlaytestCloud is even stricter: you may only record tests from the country in your profile, and software that hides your location or emulates another device gets caught and gets you removed from its panel.

One person, one account

A second account is the most direct route to a ban. Userlytics says it removes duplicate accounts together with any money they earned and may ban the person permanently. PlaytestCloud does not allow more than one account at all.

Several people in one family can still have their own accounts. Prolific allows this, but only one participant per “household” can take any given study. For the platform, a household is everyone who goes online from your network address, so it includes colleagues at the office and flatmates on shared Wi-Fi. If a relative has already taken a study, it simply disappears for you, and the rest stay available.

AI in your answers

Prolific does not allow answering with ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude or similar tools unless the researcher explicitly asks you to use one. It offers researchers automated authenticity checks: they do not read your text but look for signs that it was generated or copied. Prolific puts their accuracy at 98.7%, with a false-positive rate of 0.6%.

PlaytestCloud bans any outside help during a test, including search engines and ChatGPT. The logic is the same: the researcher wants your own opinion, even an imperfect one, not polished text.

If your answer was flagged as generated and you wrote it yourself, explain this to the researcher through the platform’s messages first, and contact support if that does not help.

Speed, attention and cancellations

The number one trigger for temporary restrictions on Prolific is finishing far too fast. First you see a warning, which puts nothing on your account. If it happens again, you are blocked from new studies for an hour. The account then comes back on its own, but repeated issues can lead to longer blocks or a permanent suspension. Genuinely quick finishes, such as being screened out or returning a study, do not count.

If something goes wrong, a technical issue or a lack of time, return the study instead of abandoning it: returning does not affect your score or your access to other studies. Every rejected submission, on the other hand, counts against you, and several rejections can hurt your account.

Prolific advises reading the study description together with the estimated time, engaging fully with each question and paying attention to attention checks, which confirm you are reading the instructions. It also stresses that a researcher cannot reject you solely for a missing or incorrect completion code.

Paid interviews need discipline. User Interviews asks you to cancel or reschedule at least 48 hours ahead and to show up on time. If you are distracted, disrespectful or do not follow instructions, the researcher can end the session without paying you, and you may be banned from future studies.

Honesty in screeners

User Interviews puts it bluntly: misrepresenting yourself in a screener or a session means automatic disqualification from future studies. It also advises keeping your profile up to date: location, job title and other details decide which studies you are invited to, and an outdated profile can land you in a study you do not actually qualify for.

UserTesting warns that it may remove your account if you break the contributor agreement, which covers its terms of service, content policy and code of conduct. Respondent reserves the right to review any account and remove those that break its rules.

If your account is already on hold

On Prolific a temporary restriction lifts automatically, so there is nothing to appeal: just wait for the timer to run out; the duration is shown on the banner in your dashboard.

If your account has been put on hold, submit an appeal through the support chatbot by choosing “I want to submit an appeal”, or reply to the on-hold email if you received one. Be accurate and honest: incomplete or misleading details slow the review down and can affect the outcome.

Your money does not disappear. Prolific lets you cash out everything already in your balance, even below the usual £6 or $6 minimum, and studies still awaiting review can be cashed out once the researcher approves them.