Stealth game mode.
So, I'm an agent of some secret organization. I'm working on taking over territory. Why should I be visible to the enemy or strangers who use the scanner for their own needs? Each of my actions is logged and shown to everyone who has an open scanner. Once in our country, this function was actively used by the lower classes of the criminal world. You go to demolish the portals of the opposite faction and under the remote portal with the most links located in a secluded place, two or three dudes with baseball bats or knives are already waiting for you. The night park is the perfect place for such dark affairs. I also heard about how especially persistent gentlemen were looking for the object of their love with the help of logs. Abuse, harassment, and all that stuff in action. However, this is not good.
But still. What to do with such privacy, when you just start playing, every interested person knows you by sight and knows the routes of your movements?
No, definitely this function (I'm talking about logs) has the right to exist. But she doesn't fit the image of a secret agent. Imagine James Bond or Mission: Impossible movie characters broadcasting their location in real time and every villain knows about their every action.
Let's discuss how to preserve privacy, do you need logs in the scanner at all, and how you could reorganize this function?
Comments
You are not neccersary a secret agent in ingress. Only if you choose to be by choosing actions.
Strictly, you don't need to know who blasted your portal, so you could just be notified about it being under attack. In PoGo you don't know who knocked you out of a gym unless you go and see for yourself.
Once someone deploys on it after it becomes apparent tho, but deployment doesn't need to be broadcasted either.
But in PoGo the secrecy makes it sooo much more convenient to cheat as nobody is alerted about what you do.
You are not visible to enemy. Your actions expose your presence. Want to be a secret agent? - stay invisible, then hit and run.
If you face IRL danger, use common sense.
I don't agree with "remove logs" point. However I think smurfling guide to privacy is needed. While niantic imagines happy players adding friends and gathering together around battle beacons, agents should know what is exposed, and how to deal with that.
You do not want to appear on the scanner for everybody to notice where you are? The ways you are travelling or the area you are living in? Simple - do not do any of those game actions that show up on intel. You can hack, explore, submit, scan, exercise etc all day long without anybody easily noticing that it was you. Do not play in the area you live. Do not capture the portal that may be in reach of your place every evening when you come home.
In case you feel that you are being stalked or threatened IRL by other players - reach out to the community. In case you are physically assaulted - report to police.
Ingress is designed as a strategic game. I do not play PoGo ... but from what I know it is not nearly as geographically strategic as ingress is. Hence maybe that is why in PoGo it does not matter if you know who kicks you out of a gym.
But since ingress is - in most locations - much more strategic you want to know who the player / account is that takes a portal down at 2am on a remote mountain top. Because that will allow you to know if that player is likely real .... Otherwise not knowing who any players are that do take and show actions would be a spoofers dream.
Saying that I do acknowledge that there are and always have been discussions about 'being stalked' or 'being followed / harassed' in ingress. And I do acknowledge that ingress can certainly be used for that purpose - no doubt. But in case you do not want to accept that risk or exposure - there is nothing stopping you from not playing ingress.
It is however an interesting question. Because especially in remote area with very few players, it is very easy to figure out roughly where players live and how they travel or where they go regularly. And these location data are effectively available to every person on the planet who does install ingress and creates an account. And since niantic does not require any real life validated info for account creation - it is effectively a free for all. That is one side of the coin.
The other side is unfortunately that the problem can easily be over-cooked within the ingress community. Example: Player A travels to a semi remote tourist spot for the day and captures the 5 portals present. There are maybe around 25 other tourists present. People come and go every hour as normal and enjoy the tourist attraction. Player A leaves after 2h. And another 1h later Player B smashes the portals and claims for themselves. Very often I have heard then accusations along the line "Player B is stalking Player A". But that is just because Player A can see that on the scanner. However Player A would never know about any other non-playing tourists who would travel the same route and arrive at the tourist spot 1h after Player A left. They would have no idea. However because it appears in a scanner and Player A was just there a few hours ago - the impression is given that Player A is stalked.
And as yet another angle to view this issue: The ability to see other players on a scanner can and has also be used for good purposes. I know players who have been warned by players of the opposite team not to follow their current path because there was either a small riot going on further along the road. Or a road accident etc. So there is also a positive side to be able to see other players on the map you know and care about ... no matter what team they play for.
I never played PoGo and have no will to waste time to check,but isn't it harder to trace PoGo player? IDK how exactly parser work,but it's a tool(illegal but working) that can be used not only to troll Ingress players via Guardian but also to track them. So i think this side of gameplay should be viewed carefully.