Is Niantic still fighting cheaters?

First of all, I already know the answer of my own question is a big "Yes", It's just that there are a lot of spoofing agent activities in my country where that agents is still not banned or even punished. Some people now honestly say that they are spoofing or having multiple backpack accounts. On the most extreme, there seems a change.org petition about Pokemon Go that spoofers want to be acknowledged to be just as the same as ground players.

Honestly, I only want to vent out my opinion, I know Niantic always does the best for us legitimate agents and never tired to fight cheaters =)

Comments

  • MirthmakerMirthmaker ✭✭✭✭

    Yes, sometimes not enough. My part of east coast of North America is rife and no one seems able to put the spooferbots out of business permanently.

  • What does pokemon petition has to do?

  • GreenVamGreenVam ✭✭✭✭✭

    when I walk around the portal, and not a single agent is nearby, but suddenly this portal starts turning blue and 4 modifiers are put in it - the niantic doesn’t give a damn, even their vaunted bot to fight against spoofers does not work.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    The TR bot is just a message-forwarder to allow the TRs to remain anonymous. There are Trusted Reporter agents on the other side of that bot that you interact with. It's them you're talking to. And reporting to TRs should only be done for remote/strategic/durable portals. Urban spoofers where you can recapture yourself should be reported via the support site.

  • InerasIneras ✭✭✭

    Cheating and policing will always be an arms race. There's a reason why Niantic and other game developers refuse to disclose their methods. It would be remiss to assume they're slacking on the job because announcements are infrequent. In August 2019 we were told that 8,000 accounts were banned. This was around the same time the new policy enforcement went live. A valid question would be, does this bottleneck empower cheaters to be bolder? Furthermore, by putting the onus on the reporters to petition three or more times, did the sludge effect discourage honest players from reporting?

    From my personal observation, the internal lead time for appeals seems to be one week. Cases that are brought the the developers' attention in the forums are answered within that period. I'm guessing management is satisfied with how fast appeals are taken care of. I am frustrated with my interactions on the support site. Francisco and Johannes cannot possibly deal with all the reports they receive. It would be great for us to help them by knowing how to submit better reports, but that knowledge could in turn benefit the cheaters. Let us escalate our reports of inappropriate behaviors in the forums, and have one developer be responsible for processing them in the current fashion: approved or denied.

    It's difficult to gauge how committed Niantic is when it comes to anti-cheating. This is a private company and we don't know the exact number of employees. The rough estimate is 620. The employee count grew by 33% in 2019 according to Growjo. What does that tell you? Are they're understaffed? Expanding rapidly? I don't know, but I found a glimmer of hope. Of the 56 current job openings, one stands out. Software Engineer, Fraud Prevention. They're literally looking for someone who is " able to write complex queries in their sleep." https://nianticlabs.com/jobs/software-engineer-fraud-prevention/ Maybe we'll see new openings for support in the near future.

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2020

    Spoofers and muti-accounters are a large reason why I stopped playing Pokemon Go. Within the hour of taking over a gym, I would almost always get knocked out again.

  • There is a gps spoofer in my area. Multiple reports does not work. GPS spoofing kills the game. Noone wants to play if a spoofer kills all portal for an hour at night.

    I think that ingress is going down. Less money, less investments. Niantic invested 3 years to develop prime but community is going less. Anti-cheating does not work.

    I read about trusted reporters but can they ban? If no, what is the purpose of TR?

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    TRs can not ban. They are not NIA Ops. They are a group of agents whose reports on spoofing are fast-tracked to the top of the queue of pending tickets.

    They are there so that you can report spoofer actions on durable portals that would be hard to recover yourself.

  • EvilSuperHerosEvilSuperHeros ✭✭✭✭✭

    @SerroZelerny

    But the big part of that is, even if a spoofer hits your hard to reach portal, unless they get banned NIA Ops will not restore the portal or portals that were hit by the spoofer. It seemingly takes many events, and many reports for NIA Ops to do anything. It's very frustrating. It also shows everyone that Niantic really can't do much about spoofing, in Ingress and doesn't appear to care (from my viewpoint).

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes, the account has to be banned before we can log a reset. There's a reason for that.

    Imagine you went to a durable and dropped it, and someone decided you must be spoofing and reported you. The ticket was closed, you're not banned and still a reset was done. I imagine you'd be quite upset if that were to happen.

    And no, it does not take "many events". I agree some do slip the banhammer first time round, but this is not the norm.

  • We still got our cheaters her in denmark - they got many extra account banned, but still buying VR items and PC (its impossible to hold that large number of portals without glyphing)


    We have taken them at least 10 times dropping items, when they was alone and many agents have stopped because of them.

    Strange NIA dont do anything.... i really think the want the cheaters to take over the game

  • Players = profit

    Spoofers = profit

    Backpack accounts = profit


    It is all about the profit so I'd say NO they don't care about safeguarding the gaming experience.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Actually, the current ingress model is not generating recurring revenue. Spoofers and backpacks don't buy in-app store gear. Sorry, but that explanation doesn't hold water for Ingress.

  • Marketing is selling active playerbase numbers, which include these as well. I just filed a report on this behavior here locally today, can you guess how it got resolved and at what speed? 😘

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2020

    Im hearing in my country there is a known multi accounter with like (20) accounts... and he still isnt banned or the mule accounts, players in the regions he plays has given up to report anymore since from what ive been reading nothing has happend.. player is free to roam with all mule packs yet no signal to niantic that its nothing strange behaviour at all cruise around with 20 mule accounts...... he has been known to laugh at people when he has multiple phones in his hands when they saw him sit in car not understanding he hurts all legit players that wont have nothing to do with him because of so many accounts..... :/

  • InerasIneras ✭✭✭

    Hearsay is inadequate. Are agents in your area familiar with the reporting format?

    https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/ingress/?s=agent-protocol&f=report-inappropriate-gameplay&l=en&p=web

    The following information is all you need to share while reporting a player: 

    • Abuser Agent name
    • Date/Time of the event (including timezone)
    • Name of the Portal affected 
    • Location of the Portal/Intel Map link 

    One limiting factor in the Niantic Player Guidelines is "Never take photos or videos of other players unless you have their explicit permission." In your case, the bad actor seems to flout the rules, and it should be easy for you to get other agents to report him.

    Use the format. Get as many agents to block him. Continue reporting until he gets three strikes. The current policy allows cheaters to thrive, but don't lose hope.

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