Spoofer Restore or Fast Track Expectations

Approximately a month and a half ago, give or take, a spoofer with multiple accounts went through the area taking out blocking links to make spoofed Big Area Fields, on two separate occasions. The second being roughly a week later.

On the first occurrence I was advised action and restores were being handled. The response was rather quite amazing. Visible changes happened in the matter of hours and a mostly full restore was complete in the matter of days, two maybe three. Kudos to all involved.

The second occurrence, the spoofed field was taken down promptly as far as I recall but no one indicated restores were being handled. Having never submitted a restore before I figured it would be interesting to see how the system worked and submitted my own. I had lost a portal and a link to a spoofer that no longer exists. Nothing hard or too horribly interesting other then to put it back would be a four hour round trip and a key, but significantly more of a trip compared to some restored in the first event. I figured if it was a spoofer blocker before it could be a blocker again.  The system ... worked not at all? Or has not worked yet.

My report was submitted around July 13th, it is now August 20th. I have heard nothing. So my primary questions are:

1. What timeline should one expect when submitting a spoofer restore request?

2. If the request is denied, will that be communicated? If not, I would have to say that is really bad form.

3. How does one follow up on a spoofer restore request? Is there a system to check what became of the report?

As a month and a week has passed my concern is less (but not zero) about the restore as summer travelers have come and gone through the area, but more about the disparate response in the matter. I am left with a number of secondary questions. Do I need to be a certain faction for my report to be reviewed in a timely manner? Do I need someone on Telegram speed dial to get things like this done, and is that really appropriate being that a system exists; even though it may not work? Was my report denied and nobody decided to drop me a line (bad form resulting in most of these questions)? Was it just lost in the 1s and 0s and there's no system in place for follow up? Did my report quietly get filed in the circular metal filing cabinet because it would have been in the way of a certain factions plans? And so on.

Thanks for the read, Here there be dragons. Shakespeares Sisters Hello Turn Your Radio On.

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Comments

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hi there. If I may ask, did you submit a ticket for that restore? Or did you report the spoofer and fill in the fast-track form and indicate on that that you needed a restore?

    I'll give you a quick rundown of how restores work.

    Portal restores (and links) are not handled by Niantic Ops. They are requested via the spoofer fast-track form and once the account is fast-tracked and banned, that request feeds through to us Vanguards. We then contact the agents requesting the restore and get the needed information to log them. After that, all logged restores are run via script by another Niantic employee (not Ops).

    If we don't get that request on our sheet, we don't know about it.

    There are occasions where spoofers are banned with normal reports. Agents that know how it works would ping us to ask for a restore and we take it further if eligible.

    It sounds like yours didn't make it on our sheet so we were unaware of your request. If you filed a separate ticket, we'd be unaware of that as well as we have no visibility of that

    Unfortunately we have a 30 day window from the action of a spoofer to log a restore, as we need to be able to verify those actions on Comms. But I'd be happy to take a look, maybe something can still be done.

    Please pm me on telegram (same username).

    And for future instances, if you requested a restore and haven't heard from a VG (most probably me) in 3 days, please ping me on telegram.

  • I reported the spoofer, submitted a fast-track form indicating a restore, and waited as the support articles indicate. It sounds like the fast-track form process needs a rework or additional information provided on the support article so that agents are informed as to how it works, contact through Telegram is required (although my personal opinion is this should not be a thing as that sounds like what we would call here a job amongst other reasons, but if that's how you want to roll, I guess), and a tracking system for follow-up (ie where did my report go exactly and why?).

    "While you're waiting for the reported account to be investigated you can gather the data the Vanguards will need..."

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Unfortunately requesting fast-track doesn't guarantee that it will be. Ops evaluates the request and processes fast-track if eligible. We only see the reset requests IF the ticket was fast-tracked and the spoofer banned.

    It's not a flawless system, I do agree.

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