Can a player be banned for fraud with portals?
In Belgium we are facing a guy in the town called Manage. At first he would submit anything he could see, interesting or not.
Interesting stuff got accepted, but most of them refused
The it got better and good nominee's came in.
Today I got one of those free box libraries.
I wanted to accept it but on the sphere image that was added in OPR I didn't see the marker. Looked around and found it 'under my feet'.
I switched to satellite and didn't recognise the environment. I dragged the streetview man tintje map and put him on the street instead of the Sphere. Tadaa, totally different location.
In my opinion (and the opinion of other OPR agents in my area) this deserves a ban
I'd you want to see for yourself:
Here's the address
Rue Saint-Fiacre 6, 7170 Manage, Belgium
Title of the nominee: Boîte à Livres
I have screenshots nut don't know how to post them here
Regards
Comments
And this is just the tip of the giant **** iceberg for this guy
Yes, someone shared in reddit a few days ago a case like this.
But i cant post links or images, i keep getting this error....
Yes, someone shared in reddit a few days ago a case like this.
I cant share link or images...
Since pictures and screenshots can't prove anything:
** EDIT: tried to post links to google sphere and streetview but I don't have the rights to it
Coordinates in Google Maps:
50.4799747,4.2313053
Zoom in and drag the Streetview-guy to the map. You'll see a normal streetview and a Sphere.
In the Sphere you can see the nominated free-lirbary-box
On streetview (and sattellite images) you'll notice the Sphere is taken somewhere else
Oh wow. I've been arguing in OPR chats that a photosphere is not proof that a portal is in the right place. But I haven't come across such a blatant example of falsifying a photosphere. The person who made that should be banned from editing Google maps.
If you look at the sphere, and click the three dots by the submitter's name, you can "report a problem" and let them know that the photo is "not of photo of this place".
@Pangarban thanks for the info, I'll do this within week, but I also hope someone of Niantic will check this thread and do something about that player
In my opinion: ban him from submitting portals and remove all portals he submitted to be sure the other ones are real
Submit a ticket at support.ingress.com
Make sure to include everything so that Niantic can pinpoint these exact submissions.
People have been banned from submitting/editing portals.
And this moron, who appears to be of my faction, has been submitting false portals for ages in his/her street, denied for weeks, until somehow, someday, he managed to get two accepted :(
Main problem is that you get nomination at level 10 without any test.
For opr you have to correctly answer question.
I have asked many time on ama that at least bronze or silver recon medal to be a requirement for nomination.
As for now new players just get to nominate portal without having to know or even read the rules.
The suggestion of a minimum recon medal requirement is a great one.
That would avoid silly nominations by new players, but this player is clearly of bad faith/polluting the game. (s)he would pass the test and still submit her/his fake portals.
It's one thing to submit everything you see, wether it's according to the submitance guidlines or not, it's a completly other thing to submit fake portals over and over and to use every tool you can to do so. We encoutner an Agent here who has approximately 45 Fake Portals (fake pictures taken from other places, multiple use of one picture to submit portals, pictures copied from other existing portals somewhere far away, self-made info signs, all that stuff...), Maybe more we didn't verfied yet. Portal reports through the game take ages sometimes, especially if we have to go through appeals after.
The facts of misuse are vivid, OPR-Team claims (i've read it somewhere) to keep track of malicious Agents. But yet, last week 2 fake portals went live again, with the same name and the same pictures used from other portals at the same location where they've been removed 1 month ago. So i ask myself, do they really keep track of an Agent who got that many portals removed (lots but not all of those fake portals are removed by now...)?
And the thing is, it's spreading, in the neighbor village another agent is submitting fakes. He is famous in his Pokemon-Community for the numerous Stops and Gyms he created and that bad practice example can now spread to numerous of pokemon players, because they can submit Stops in this country since yesterday. I really don't want to think of the signal this example is sending if there are no consequenses ever....
I will say this I sometimes will offset a streetview by a few feet if the object is very close to the curb as I have had photospheres merged with the streetview vehichle line in the past. To me abuse is actually faking the location if the photo sphere is of by a few meters it could be an issue of closeness to an existing streetview car line
I hope @nian@NianticMac make it easy with AI and agent listen and follow for nomination.
Sounds like its the Belgium equivalent of a submitter obsessed with Pymmes park we have in the UK.
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/737/pymmes-park-in-enfield-uk-do-not-accept-submissions-here
Can a player be banned? No, or it's very unlikely. People make mistakes and also try to abuse the system and they are all still here (as far as I know).
My thoughts to fix a lot of stuff like this goes something like this.
1) make an easier way to report mischief and start banning players for it
2) move submissions AND OPR to level 11 and add testing for submissions.
This calls for a perm ban for the account in question in my opinion.
It probably has been proposed before, but why not also have a submission-quality rating for players in OPR? If many of a player's portal submits/edits get rejected in OPR with 1*, or get flagged for abuse, the submitter's rating can drop to POOR. This could be made visible in OPR to warn reviewers to check those submits even better for abuse, or have other consequences.
Message with some examples have been sent to Niantic (via another form - companies and persons can complain if portals are on private property)
Casenumber is 2514470
@NianticMac
Got word back from Niantic. One fake portal that got through is removed from the game.
It's in their policy not to communicate if or what actions were taken regarding that agent.
I would say that OPR should begin at L10 and if you can maintain a 60 or 70+ success rate and after reaching gold recon, THEN you can submit new portals after level 12 or 13.
They should be. There should be more bans for players who repeatedly submit fakes and deliberately falsify information.
I hope Niantic first blick agents 1 month if agents send in lots of bad and faild dont follow criteria after 3 block we get more and more block. If the agents start new accouts Niantick remove all accouts agents have and make.
@NianticMac
I just recently pointed out to a new submitter why I don't 5* the location on a 360 unless the context matches the satellite view. I could have pointed them to this thread.