Is Verified Medal will be returning on the 10th year of Ingress?

@NianticAustin

Hello, very curious question thats in the title. Is there anyway or possibility that this medal can be part of the 10th yr celebration for ingress? New design or old. For me or to the community…be Verified as an agent no matter what faction they choose matters.

We matter “all agents” and some casual and a whole lot are loyal to ingress, world famous mobile game and agents wishes “Verified Medal” to come back. Just curious! Thanks for listening!

WindCaller96. Enl.

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Comments

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    Are you proposing that Niantic go back to requiring people to validate accounts with a phone number?

  • undeaddanundeaddan ✭✭✭

    Don't you just get the verified badge for completing the training mission?

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    No it was for using Google voice to verify your phone number existed, they lost access to Google voice with the spit, and was useless, and trial to circumvent....

  • Nah. I remember at scouts. Badges are awarded to those deserve it. Just saying

  • In fact. We get to link email accounts besides cell number. Voice won’t work I guess gps will. Try there. They watching us anyways.

  • undeaddanundeaddan ✭✭✭

    What badge are you talking about? Not the blue tick badge then?

  • I was confused coz you said blue. That kinda turquoise?.

  • edited June 2022

    They dropped the Verification because it was expensive and easily thwarted, so it didn't verify anything except minor technical capability, which spoofers require regardless.

    A method of validating the position of a user would be great, and something like the new VPS system Niantic is developing could be used that way, but that requires a lot of people to scan portals in their region, so that we don't have the same bootstrap issue that Wayfarer had back when it was OPR. If there's no-one of a certain level in an area, no-one can expand the options to allow people to level faster.

    Additionally, if there's a 10 year badge, replicating an old badge, then it should be based on Founder, not Verified. Verified doesn't mean anything. Founder has for years meant "I was there" in the early game. A 'Founder-inspired' badge for people who play during the 10 year anniversary would be cool, distinct from the yearly "I played during the last year" badge.

  • Thank you for responding. It’s clear to me that Verified Badge is nothing worthy compared to Founder Badge. I was amazed of the look and how cool to have that badge as well. I have met some of em Founders with a badge and knowing they have been chasing xm for that long. Yeah. “Founder Badge”… idk if I’m going to get it. But that’s really cool and a sort of feeling proud to be an agent in the world of Ingress. Maybe Niantic will consider and hear us as a community!


    WindCaller96. Enl.

  • tp235tp235 ✭✭✭✭

    I would like to see SMS verification reinstated, with or without verified medals, as it is a cost-effective way to authenticate that an account is eligible.

    Also, it goes without saying that this should be introduced for games other than Ingress.


    SMS authentication is somewhat effective as a countermeasure against location spoofing and multiple accounts.

    It is because after the account has been banned, it can be denied even if the same phone number is tried to be used.

    It will not be effective against the lunatics who are constantly cheating by subscribing to many SIM cards, but at least it will be effective against casual players, and overall, location faking and multi-accounting should decrease significantly.


    So, this is my suggestion, but it might be a good idea to include SMS authentication as an authentication for Niantic IDs, rather than for individual games.

    As Niantic Social (Campfire) takes center stage in the future, I feel the need to maintain the health of this Niantic ID.

    And by requiring all game logins to be linked to a Niantic ID, we can expect essentially the same effect as the Verify Medal.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2022

    @WindCaller96 The Founders badge is effectively the Year One badge. Innovator is is Year Two, Vanguard is Year Three, Luminary is Year Four, etc.

    Post edited by Hosette on
  • I would like to see SMS verification reinstated, with or without verified medals, as it is a cost-effective way to authenticate that an account is eligible.

    Costly, not effective.

    The primary use-case for SMS authentication is to verify that a claim to access has access. However, there are thousands of sites providing temporary numbers that can be used for this authentication, rendering it pointless for stopping spoofers in this situation. Verification that someone has temporary access to a random phone number does not prove independence of accounts.

  • tp235tp235 ✭✭✭✭

    Okay, so you're an XM Ambassador, but can you suggest specific ideas on how to prevent various forms of cheating?

    You keep denying that "that won't work", "this doesn't make sense", etc., but rarely have you come up with concrete suggestions.

    We do not believe that all fraud will be reduced to zero all at once.

    But we do hope that it will effectively reduce fraud and that no one will start a new fraud.


    You are talking about lunatics.

    That lunatic will eventually have to be shut down, including his IMEI number.

    But he will get another new smart phone.

    It's just a matter of solemnly banning them one by one.

    At least that's where the Niantic staff should focus their efforts.

    The more time Niantic spends dealing with casual cheaters, the less likely they are to ban the accounts of the lunatics you mention.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @tp235 How much human effort do you think that will take? Let's use person-hours per week as a metric.

    How effective do you think it will be?

  • tp235tp235 ✭✭✭✭

    @Hosette

    You mean SMS verification?

    If so, and if this authentication system requires a large number of people to be assigned at all times and incurs a large cost, it would not be very time-consuming, since SMS-based two-step authentication is not currently used for online logins.

    As for specific estimates of manpower and costs involved in the process, as well as subsequent maintenance costs, I am not a specialist in this area, so please ask someone who is capable of such estimates to provide you with one.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @tp235 I apologize for being unclear. I was talking about "it's just a matter of solemnly banning them one by one."

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2022

    XMA does not speak for Niantic. Stop getting caught at the pointless title.

  • @Hosette thank you for explaining. Old medals when discontinued and forever gone. I picked up Sage yr. By now, if I only knew about the game. I could have picked up all of them. I was question regarding Verified medal “verification” was required before “prime” I missed that too. Coz like I said, new to the game and rural area with the empty mind units to capture and I or other faces bots. Spoofing. With that said. I hope that Niantic will continue to listen and found a way to stop all this nonsense. Until next time…10 yrs of mobile game? Come on. It’s easy for me to say. But it’s possible! Medals return on the 10th yr BDay!


    WindCaller96 Enl

  • That lunatic will eventually have to be shut down, including his IMEI number.

    This is the problem with your logic. Phone numbers aren't connected to IMEI in a way Niantic can see. SMS verification doesn't check the IMEI. It confirms that the number you gave them, is one you can read a code off of.

    Niantic doesn't need SMS verification to read the IMEI. They already have it.

    Do they need to do more, yes. But SMS verification isn't the way. I already mentioned that the VPS may be a way to location check spoofers, if there's enough scanning done to provide sufficient points of contact.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    Also at this point, both Apple and Google have it where the MAC address is randomized on the devices.

  • tp235tp235 ✭✭✭✭

    Then I would like XMA to advise Niantic Inc. on effective fraud prevention measures.

    At the very least, XMA's suggestions would be more appreciated by Niantic than those of me, a very ordinary player.

    And I would like to see those specific suggestions here.

  • They've been made many many times, here and elsewhere. This is also massively off topic for this thread, as it was about making a 10 year badge reminiscent of the original.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    @tp235 Why do you think XM Ambassadors are specialists in effective fraud prevention measures? Fraud specialists certainly exists in this world but it's unlikely that any of the XMA have those professional bona fides.

    I am not currently a fraud expert, but I've done fraud detection and analysis professionally in a previous job. If I was advising Niantic I would tell them to find a couple of data scientists with the noses of hound dogs and turn them loose on the trail. The problem is that fraud prevention isn't a one-and-done engineering effort. Every time Niantic finds a way to shut down one route to cheating the cheaters get smarter and figure out how to evade it. Then Niantic has to adapt, and then the cheaters adapt, and it's a permanent cat and mouse game. This is an expensive proposition with no end in sight, and Niantic has to want to invest in it. I don't think they currently have the will to do so.

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2022

    Disagree - SMS is pretty damn cheap. Yes, it can be circumvented by buying an SMS number etc. BUT - will scare off the majority of noob multiaccounters. ie : I think it's better than nothing. At the moment Niantic has ZERO account verification, and it shows.

    I would like it so multiple SMS over time have to be sent, to the same number.

    Setting up SMS fakery would also probably require a credit card - which is another way verification could be enforced, possibly at a higher level. (Thinking verification levels).

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2022

    The issue here is:

    1) Do players want phone scanning all the time / part of the time to verify it's surroundings? If so, you probably have killed off the hard game part of Ingress when players are using Satphones/low data environments.

    2) Also - the areas spoofers hit that matter - they are usually areas with zero to little scan data.

    3) Casual urban spoofers, farm bots, yeah could work but see point 1) (Also this too can probably be faked).

  • That's an alternate suggestion. But the fact remains that SMS verification solves a problem that Ingress doesn't have, and has no effective influence over the problem it does have.

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