Potential misinterpretation of drone hack data potentially leading to false bans: part 2
M1chaeI
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This is a direct follow-up thread of https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/20961/potential-misinterpretation-of-drone-hack-data-potentially-leading-to-false-bans, and I recommend reading the original post. In the original post, I asked two questions, but only the first one was answered. The two questions I asked were as follows:
- "I would like to ask Niantic to investigate its logging on drone hack locations"
- "and also to verify with support how they interpret drone hack locations when doing ban appeals"
The first question was answered by that "Using your Drone will not result in a ban - regardless of how far from your physical location it is located.", which seems to imply that the logging as asked in question 1 itself is correct and you will not get banned by an automated or manual system for drone hacking.
This leaves the second question open: If you get banned by an automated or manual system, and it is a false positive, is there any way for the people doing the ban appeals to misinterpret the drone hack data, since there appears to be no difference between a drone hack and a normal hack? If so, this would result in falsely denied ban appeals. I will give a concrete example, copied from last thread:
Imagine I travel halfway across the world and leave my drone there. I travel back, and I move my drone. I could do this for example in a train, since there is usually enough time to move the drone, but not to hack before getting speedlocked. I then exit the drone screen without hacking and hack any portal normally. After a while, I decide to reopen my drone view, and hack. From the GDPR data dump, I cannot tell if I did a drone hack, or spoofed my location halfway across the world to do this hack. I will post the technical details in the next comment.
My unanswered question that I would like Niantic to respond to therefore is:
Is there any way for the people doing ban appeals at Niantic Support to misinterpret drone hack data as described in my scenario, resulting in wrongfully denied ban appeals?
Comments
The technical details are as follows:
The lines will be from most recent action to least recent action (!). The scenario is as follows: I move my drone. I exit the drone screen. I hack a normal portal. I enter the drone screen. I hack the portal the drone is on.
<self coordinates> are either the coordinates of the player or the portal that the player is interacting with, I'm not 100% sure.
<timestamp> <drone coordinates> hacked enemy portal success //(drone hack)
<timestamp> <self coordinates> hacked enemy portal success //(normal portal hack)
<timestamp> <self coordinates> drone moved Drone Move
Please note again that the bottom line is the first action I performed, this is the order it is in in the game_log.tsv. Please also note that everything including and after the // is not present in the log files, and is just a comment.
If you look at these exact log lines without any other context, even I would tell you that this player falsified their location. This is why I'm sceptical about if these log lines are interpreted correctly by the people who are doing ban appeals.
You're asking for more 'behind the scenes' info than Niantic will ever give you. Let it go.
When the answer is a simple "Yes".
No hidden info shared.
"[H]ow they interpret drone hack locations when doing ban appeals" is not a yes/no question.
I'm sorry that you missed the bold text near the bottom of the post. I'll repeat it here: Is there any way for the people doing ban appeals at Niantic Support to misinterpret drone hack data as described in my scenario, resulting in wrongfully denied ban appeals?