Spoofing and reinstate spoofed portals
Hello everyone,
our area is dealing with this problem since August 2019.
A group of accounts captured a few top mountains marker and closed us in a field to prevent us to play.
This happened back in August and the resonators were always at 100%. Never saw one not at 100%.
Thanks to the holiday season someone destroyed one anchor of the first field (two of them were located at some popular spot at a ski station), one week later this happened to the second field as well.
But only 24 hours later that the first field was destroyed, a more remote portal was chosen (in the first case) and in the second one 24 hours later the same anchor was recaptured and we were back in the same situation again.
Same players, same portals, same criteria to chose what portal to use: top mountains marker.
The more remote they're, the better they're. More remote means more hard to reach and so less chance that someone will capture them and destroy all the "hard" work they did.
And this means less chance to be reported for spoofing.
So I reached out a TR this time and actions were taken where appropriate (one account was banned, but the other one was not).
I asked to reset every portal that they used to close us inside a field by giving them a list of portals.
24 hours later a Vanguard contacted me and I gave him the same list again and all the details that I have including date, time and Intel Map links.
Still nothing, all the fields are still up despite that the account that put the fields back up after they was destroyed got banned.
I reached out Niantic Support by reporting the situation again.
Same automated response as all the reports that I made back in August and September.
"We can't discuss actions taken against other players".
I don't know why if a player was banned, all his portal are not resetted automatically.
They were unconquered before, some of us didn't know about their existence at all.
I even sent a message to Niantic following the format that RedSoloCup posted on this forum (https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/2360/portal-reinstatement-after-spoofing) to prove that they are perfectly elegible.
Still nothing both from the Vanguard and Niantic.
I'm thinking about reaching them out on Twitter, I know they give Pokemon player support there.
But I don't have much hope. I'll probably get the same answer.
Just a few questions: for this procedure only the portals spoofed in the last 30 days can be resetted, right?
And if yes, how much time is needed to reset this?
Should I ask the reset again and give them instead of a list only the portal that were captured by the banned agent in the last 30 days?
The 30 days are about to expire in about two week and I thought that this will require less time, that's probably the only opportunity we as community have to solve this situation that is going on since August 2019.
No one here wants to climb a mountain, destroy an anchor and finds out that 24 hours is up again.
Especially during the winter season.
Any advice is appreciated.
Thank you for your help and sorry if I made some language mistakes, english is not my native language.
Still learning 😁.
Comments
This sucks for you and your team
NIA is broken in the 'actually doing something or using common sense department' regarding the spoofer department as of recently (past year(ish) it seems to me).
I play in Connecticut USA and have watched with dismay spoof reports in area and regional communities that are similar. Dunno if it's the integrity of the reports or the lack of manpower on NIA's end that is preventing the accounts from being wiped quickly and to satisfaction.
We currently have an account in our state that has been running rampant for almost two weeks of which not a single ENL or RES would argue is not completely and undoubtedly spoofing. It has taken over a city as well as a large swath of territory using island and hike portals with long garbage links.
Multiple reports have been written and our TRbot/Trusted reporter has also been included as well as our regional vanguard(s). FWIW the reports I have put together are complete and I'd put them up against anyone's for thoroughness.
The answer no one wants to hear but seems to be reality is NIA either 1. doesn't care to truly address individual cases or 2, doesn't have the workforce to do so diligently and respond to reports.
I would guess #2 is a major part of it but there has to be part of #1 when reports are written with god like travel times, pictures, links, etc. and any common sensed people (and perhaps some insane ones) would see the account for what it is....a spoofer. Emails received back from 'Francisco' saying the issue has been reviewed and action has been taken (when it seems the only action to be taken is a ban--or at least some kind of lock out if we're gonna play this 3 strike rule) have led our entire community/state ENL team to conclude complete incompetence at the least and more than likely just complete apathy--or worse--the email is just a computer generated response sent after some small amount of time has passed to appease the player base.
Don't get your hopes up and either accept a broken game where a spoof account or two can ruin an entire communities want to play or just delete.
It is only getting worse from what I've seen in my corner of the world and from past to present actions.
Three strike policy is a joke IMHO.
Probably that's why the 2nd account is still alive, at least one got banned after months and months of reports.
About accepting a broken game: yes, I did it when the biggest field was put up. Since then I've only captured portals and hacked them to keep the sojourney medal alive, can't link anything when you're covered by a big field. And I'm not driving 40km to get out of that field
And despite the fact that when the field was taken down some player put up random links to prevent that player to close us again in that field, we're still covered by a biggest field.
The reasons why I asked for a portal reset, it's because we're tired and many players are quitting the game due to this.
I can say that before that happened, about 40 agents where active daily both RES and ENL, now you can count them on one hand.
Can't create a farm zone, he'll attack it in 10-15 minutes.
If you tag him in the in-game chat he'll ignore you and take down everything almost every day using other accounts.
But probably even if NIA resets that portal, the spoofer will put up the same field in about 24 hours with another account.
why are people doing this? It’s ruining the game for others!
It's 2020 and cheating is still rampant. I'm surprised that with so much technology available there is not a way to match up actual game play actions with the metrics that modern devices generate. Steps counter, accelerometer, altitude, GPS location, network locations of near by cell towers and/or WiFi access points.
Most products trust GPS signals as if God sent them and hardly validate or triangulate it with data that is generated from other on-board components. It's not easy but a large corporation like NIA is capable of such things.
"Never give up, never surrender!"✊
Three strikes policy is a joke.
We had an island spoofed, no ban.
The island costs a minimum of $1400 to fly to. No reset without ban.
I hope your perma field gets knocked down.
If you spoof. Instant ban.