Concerns re: Spoofing [A Dedicated Thread]

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  • Yeah, I get the feeling that support is outsourced to someone who doesn't have any good tools, maybe they run some script on an account and get a red or green checkmark or whatever and ignore it if it doesn't trigger the "speed warning" too badly, but meanwhile any person with half a brain cell can see whats going on.

    Cheaters have ruined so many games and ingress has become one of them, it's obvious that nia doesn't care about game integrity. They probably only care about "active accounts", number of portal scans and such. Meanwhile the only ones left playing here are people who just use ingress as a fidget spinner and cheaters. FS at home meant the community took a big hit, and with cheaters running rampant there's no interest in reviving it..

    Even if someone is finally caught after ruining the game for the rest of us for half a year, they would only get first strike and can continue to play.. Or they just play one of their other spoof accounts..

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes. I've seen too many cases where blatant spoofers are not banned. Or "permanent banned" accounts are restored.

  • GrogyanGrogyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    2FLA is the only way to verify that players are where they say they are. As much as everyone hates it, a 15 second wayspot scan is currently the only mention Niantic as a business have actually implemented as a 2FLA method.

  • The problem is how many devices cannot scan at all, this removing quite a large part of the playerbase.

  • That and the fact that you can very well scan your feet, if there is not enough scans to do some comparison…

  • Yeah asking someone to scan a VPS enabled portal would be absurd since they're few and far between.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Scans are no good, most of the hard anchors we use are low data and never been scanned.

  • NoctarionNoctarion ✭✭✭
    edited November 2022

    Same happens here, it's been a while since I got someone banned for spoofing and I've been reporting accounts that show up from nowhere to block us in the middle of building a multi-layer or 2 accounts from both factions that came to F with what I had built around my neighbourhood with the RES and blocked me with the ENL account in case I wanted to rebuild, no one was there phisycally attacking those portals cause I was returning home in my bike and I saw nobody.

    Reports are getting closed all at the same time when you report more than one account. I strongly believe that all those that review our reports (Tura, Louise, Sofonisba and the others) are just bots that have not been functioning well lately, maybe something got F'd up and they stopped working properly cause the evidence is clear and no sanction has been made.

    The other option is spoofing methods are just getting better and those supposed humans don't find anything wrong when checking the activity of those accounts.

  • From the reports here, I see that Nia doesn't care about the cheaters, unfortunately after the prime started, the spoofers make the party in the game. When I started in 2017, spoofers were banned immediately, I didn't even need to report it, today I've already made several reports of a player who has run 10000km this year and no banning, not to mention the other accounts he uses to level up portals. I've already given up on ingress, I don't even spend any more time running to play. One thing that should also be implemented, was a portal hack log, as there are people here in the state where I live who have infinite keys from a distant portal, and the portal only has shields, no farm mods, even so every week he turns the portal on the virus and redoes the fields, with at least 30 links.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    We've seen countless "all reports are handled by a real person" sayings on the forum by Vanguards or XMAs as well....

    Reports of urban spoofs just won't.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    When saying "all reports are handled by a real person", players are assuming that reports will be carefully reviewed.

    When you said "Yes, they are"... "closing the ticket instantly within 1 minute" is indeed handled. Semantics, as always.

  • fxcfxc ✭✭✭

    There are more accounts on ingress playing with gps spoofing than playing fair. Niantic Support will start banning people who play by the rules. They have also started replacing players who quit with red bots

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2022

    Well said.

    Some reporting categories will indeed be handled carefully be real person but it's still difficult to get players who violated ToS permanently banned. "30 days passed and they show up again" is the often case.

    However, some other reporting categories will be "handled by real person" by clicking "close the ticket" instantly. You've see the reply below my comment. It's still seen as "handled manually" by them. Whatever...

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    Haha the number of lvl to 8 in a day accounts then vanish is huge.

    Again deep learning would fix this.

  • Two fake accounts in less than 24 hours in Milan area @NianticThia . Two accounts are still active, regardless the in game reports being "carefully reviewed". And for the record, their actions target specific players, this game is literally allowing cyber bullying...

  • Same here, called out a guy when he was spoofing as usual during his lunch break, then he created a new account on the other side the next day. Straight out of the box same pattern as every other spoof: Glyping, Fielding and spending 20-120 minutes between portals that are 50-100 meters apart, reported like 5 times (every time he moved after nia closed ticket) and have confirmed that it's him based on his RL actions (which i cannot use as proof because doxing)..

    Nia just closes every time. I'm fairly certain Ingress doesn't have any anti-cheat crew now, but have just dumped the responsibilities onto Pokemon Go support which doesn't care about multi accounts and are used to the less transparent gameplay where cheaters more easily can pretend to be legit players in the community, thus they just dont bother to do anything.

    Unfortunately for them, in Ingress players actually have the tools to see whats going on, and real players dont bother playing against bots.

  • There is no actual benefit of mentioning the community manager. She even does not come to the forum frequently. She won't get interested in helping the anti-spoofing.

  • so so far what is the result of this thread? 🤣

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    successfully making the general board of this community forum looking cleaner, which is what the community manager wants...

  • Niantic team POV: mute this channel. Oh no more spoofing issues, let’s all have beers.

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