Instant bans were sent to multiple agents without any comment
As the title says, mutiple accounts now across the world have been banned, some maybe within reason or by upholding the ToS, but don't the ToS also say that an agent will receive an email why they have been banned?
As it was initally posted as a bugreport, and completed as it was on purpose those account were banned, is it the new scanning method used to track spoofers that instantly ban account and give no information on the ban, while also reporting legitimate accounts of legitimate players who have never spoofed at all?
I am curious of there have been more reports, and reports on both sides of the game. My local, good friend and legitimate player was banned for no reason and I am curious if this happened to more players.
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The TOS don't say that. They say "We may suspend or terminate your access to and use of the Services, at our sole discretion, at any time and without notice to you, including if (a) you fail to comply with these Terms; (b) we suspect fraud, cheating, or misuse by you of Content or Services; or (c) we suspect any other unlawful activity associated with your Account."
So, if any account, even yours, is suspected of anything and is banned without reason, you'd accept it without any questions at all why you are banned?
Even if you played legit and have no events that may have even caused it? And without any rebuttal?
If I was accused of dishonesty, I wouldn't start my rebuttal by misquoting the terms of service, because I know that would make me look more dishonest.
Niantic is generally conservative about banning ingress cheaters. They often give second or third chance to spoofers. If someone received permanent ban without notification and it's not a massive, wrong auto-ban (like the previous iOS Intel ban wave bug), I would suppose that Niantic is 100% sure that this player violated the rules heavily. It might be a false positive but that player definitely did something very suspicious even if not admitting. If that's actually a spoofing ban, I would be happy that Niantic skips the 3-strike policy that spoils cheaters, and just kick the spoofers out straightway.
We have no knowledge of the type of transgression that Niantic banned these accounts for. One shouldn't assume it's spoofing. It may be something else, or even a combination of actions.
Also, nobody can vouch for another player 100%. You simply do not have a view of what that person does with their account. Or who else has access to that account.
It could be they have been flagged and warned before, just because you think someone doesnt cheat or break the rules doesnt mean they havent done anything wrong, it could be a false flag also maybe with the Cal thing but thats hard to say exactly...
“Cal thing”? Is that short for California? And what’s the “thing”?
But likely irrelevant to the current bans.
For all we know it could be wayfarer collusion.
more details?
@TheKingEngine There are some fairly obvious cabals of reviewers that collude to make their own rules for what should and shouldn't be a wayspot. Based on talking to other people sometimes it's that they decide to never accept certain things (like trail markers) despite Niantic's guidelines, or sometimes they only accept things that their group has submitted and they reject everything else. Parts of Germany sometimes have periods where everything gets rejected, and that's been pretty solidly traced to armies of review bots.
Thank you for sharing information about common knowledge. I was just asking for more details about this specific case as he mentioned.
Seeing who started the thread, I think I know who OP is talking about. It's a pity, and hopefully will be resolved soon. The person whose account got banned has always been honest and loyal. They were an in-game PITA for the opposing faction while being respected as a human being by its members; cheating is just not in that person's character.