Outgress.com
in General
I was googling away this morning and stumbled across https://outgress.com/
From a quick glance, this site apparently allows a registered user to view any agents last actions, heat maps of play, normal times of play, likely candidates for longest held portals and other such information.
By the text, it states that the information is gathered from user submitted email damage reports, which doesn't work for my apparent oldest portals listed as I have been the only one ever to cap them. There was no damage report ever sent, thus no email ever generated.
I wouls juat like to know if NIA aware of this application/site and does it conform to the terms of service? @RedSoloCup @NIA_Henry
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Comments
It violates the ToS.
Yep, ToS violation.
this site is run by ENL i think, so whoever is dumb to send in their private stuff there u share with opposite faction and its against TOS as said..
Thanks guys. I thought so.
I know you guys are going to freak out on me when I say this, but.... it’s actually not a ToS violation. It’s a form of crowd sourcing.
I wouldn't say I'm 100% sure on that. If it's crowdsourcing damage reports, then how can it list portals that I submitted, and i have been the only one to cap - ever. What it says it does (in crowdsourcing damage reports) and the information it actually contains appears to be in contradiction of each other.
I'm requesting NIA to confirm @RedSoloCup @NianticBrian @NIA_Henry
You have owned these portals since their inception then?
Yes. I submitted them, and I have been to only one ever to have capped them. Remote sat phone portals.
Intresting. That does indeed seem to suggest there's more to it then attack e-mails indeed.
I would not give this website any of my information.
IMHO, it's *very* grey area. All it's doing is collecting portal under attack emails that you are already getting, and collating that data into more convenient information. With a team of agents on there, you could effectively monitor a very large area for agent activity.
The voluntary nature of the data lends me to swing towards not a tos violation per say. But rather the the indexing of data is kind of a tos violation imho. With all things being equal, i'd err on the side of caution and say don't use it. Who knows how Niantic will feel about it.
It's a TOS violation -- the data belongs to Niantic, not us, and there's no exception in the TOS that would allow us to give the owner permission to index it. Collecting data from emails has generally been seen as less harmful than scraping, but I personally find the heat maps generated by Outgress to be a strong argument against using emails in this manner. It's a demonstration of how collating and analyzing pieces of data which are harmless in the individual can create an aggregate privacy violation.
The thing about your longest held portals is interesting. I've never heard anything that would indicate that Outgress is scraping. If I recall correctly, the damage report emails do include links going down -- did anyone else ever link to your sat phone portals? If so, someone killing the other end of the link might have resulted in your portals entering the system, although I'm not sure that would have provided your name. If someone has a spare link destroyed damage report email sitting around, that'd be informative.
Sites like Outgress are not "run by ENL" or "run by RES". They're run by people who want to make a buck out of scraped (or emailed) data.
That really is without faction.
🍿
This has been addressed multiple times in the AMAs. Curated posts can be found here, originally done by Josh Stock:
http://docs.google.com/document/d/1W0FUKoW2oV9g80ZWWQfBJqohAT3PloYeG1K3Rnblizw/edit
Page 33:
W11Q85: Raymond Szczur - What is Niantic's position on http://outgress.com?
W11A85: I'm not sure about our official position. I personally think it is against the spirit of the game.
Page 113:
Q42: Cate Goodfriend - Niantic has made it clear that the construction or maintenance of third-party databases of Ingress player data is a violation of the Ingress Terms of Services. My understanding of the TOS is that the use of these databases by individual players is also a violation.
I’m curious about a service out there called Outgress. It appears to be a third-party database of Ingress player data, but it’s built out of attack notification emails. The folks behind it claim that “Niantic does not attempt to put terms on what you are allowed to do with your emails. You are free to search, compile, share, etc.”
Is it true that the attack notification emails are not covered by the Ingress TOS? Would you advise players that it’s ok to use or contribute to this service?
A42: I have to default to the Ingress TOS. Within there contains the line that you agree NOT to "index" content. I am no lawyer so take what I am about to say with that in mind. Attack notifications seem to fall under "content" as they are generated as a service by Ingress that you can opt out of. So to me, yeah, that system seems like a violation of the TOS.
Page 130:
Q208: Dani (gingergamergirl) - While third-party sites and services come and go, I am sure Niantic is aware of the ones used at large, such as thrakazog.com, outgress.com, and IITC. Will Niantic provide an answer on whether or not these sites and services are TOS-compliant?
A208: Thrakazog is TOS compliant and we work with him in an official and formal capacity. I've already rendered an opinion on the others.
Edit: Formatting of quotes
Some of the portals in question have never been linked to. Some have been linked but the links is still present. They have not been destroyed.
It's indicating to me that there is more happening that just attack notification emails being uploaded.
Thanks for the info @VanJeffery . Trawling through AMAs can be a little time consuming. Cheers!
Thanks, @GallifreyanP -- appreciate the information.
well i have heard different, but either way its against tos....
I had a look at the public accessible parts of the page to see what information it has about me / my area:
2 !! portals captured in a 20 km radius in all of 2019.
Last discovered portal in 20 km radius Nov 2018
All my newly nominated portals (23 accepted) are in this radius - and I know of some other agents who also successfully got some accepted,
My local RES nemesis doesn't show up AT ALL
I find a handful of attacks from my nemesis next town. Most active - 3 attacks on 6th Dec 2016
I get swiped once in a while from my town - maybe once every month. We talk 50+ portals lost in a go at least. If I'm in the neighbouring town then that happens inside a week. Not a single of these is visible.
This indicates either no scraping or at least no scraping in my area (and no subscribers in my area either)
No - I'm not a big city player. So info in such places might be pretty different.
Interesting is also the following stat:
82 million processed e-mails
8300 attacks in the last 24 hours
This is a 1 in 10000 ratio. Surely the website isn't running since 27 years already. Or that it is getting a lot less data recently and is dying slowly. I don't speculate where it was getting so much more data from at 'better times'.
Actually it seems I just found a stats page that seems to indicate the most data was collected around summer 2017. I wouldn't call it dead now in comparison - but approx. 1/3rd or less usage right now.
Just to add that I was duped into thinking it just used email data but once it had my Google account it got information not possible by email. Never link a Google account. I've now delinked, changed Google password and revoked anything outgress from my Google account.
Oh and because it freaked me out I disabled email forwarding too.
I only wanted to know which portals I hadn't visited.
Beware!
That's 100% false. A lot of people in TBG suffered consequences from their actions.
Most didn't.
This Thread is from 09/19 - now one year old...
That should show you that either Nia doesn't care or is not able to take actions against it 🤷
And yet, years later, you still can't grasp that a dump of people present in a slack channel - that they may have been invited to well after they stopped using a slack, or that they just muted and ignored - does not equate to a list of active users of a tool.
Perhaps Niantic - understanding correlation does not imply causation - declined to act on questionable data except where proof of wrongdoing was present, much the same as they do with other infractions.
Perhaps you're unaware or ignoring the threats, vandalism, and violence that impacted players on the receiving end of the witch hunt that slack dump kicked off.
Any way around it, though you bring it up frequently, you're demonstrating a remarkable lack of understanding of the subject beyond the same old regurgitated ENL witch hunt talking points.
Or the leadership changed after this was posted and this hasn't before been put up in front of @NianticBrian .
Simply put, Niantic should end the practice of sending emails out with company protected data in them, if they intend to protect the company data.
Just shutting down the email notifications seems like the best idea. Would also save Niantic money.
It's still a 'cost', as some people do use those instead of notifications, with some easy Gmail filters.
But realistically, it's not a cost that isn't worth it.
Well, but there are more email notifications apart from portal attacks, no need to cut those down too.
Since my previous comment has been deleted, I guess you must be right :D
I only suggest getting rid of the attack notification emails.