Option to Disable Niantic Social

Is there a way to disable Niantic Social. I hate that all my pokemon friends(many whom I barely know) now have access to my ingress id. This is information I should be allowed to share or not share as I choose. I think this is a huge privacy concern that urgently needs to be addressed.

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Comments

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm curious... how would this impact OPSEC? Genuine question.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes, it might be a rare case, but if you can see who is online at a given time, you can "guess" an operation. Several comms apps request access to your contact list and then show your online status. If you don't pay attention, your online status combined with your teammates online status can reveal that an ongoing OP.

    I myself have been able to guess the the plan just from 2 portal alerts and a portal capture, so it might be a rare scenario, but possible.

    Did I fulfill your couriosity? :)

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    Why do you think opsec usually involves making no actions that make you identifiable on COMM? Ingress is perhaps the one game where it's easy to broadcast your location with a portal capture.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    I don't see anywhere that your location is revealed when you have your game presence set to "online". Or even offline. You reveal your presence by actions on the map. So not sure how this would breach OPSEC.

    I do agree though that it should be opt-in per platform.

    @cmaxxen I believe you can request your HPWU account be removed without affecting your other games.

  • I've heard of people planning to change their email for different games just to keep things separate.

    Remembering all the issues with authentication regarding Mission Creator Tool, OPR, Community ... I think I'll hold off. Besides, my IGN is the same across all games.

    Does turning off "Let my Friends see info about the last time I played Niantic Games" help for those concerned with OpSec? Also, maybe don't try to take over that gym when you're waiting for an op to start.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you share multiple games on one email address, changing one will affect all the others as well. You can't separate them if they've been created on the same email/FB

  • Oh, meaning if I associate PoGo with FB, all other games would also be associated with FB automatically?

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    If all your other games were linked to the same email account, yes, as I understand it.

  • DhrMekmekDhrMekmek ✭✭✭

    I'm seeing a checkbox whether or not to share my online status with my friends, so tick that off and no problem on the BAF situation?

  • aaronviannoaaronvianno ✭✭✭✭

    On looking at it, I only see myself having access to when I last played. In that version of it, it doesn't seem to have opsec issues.

  • EngrishEngrish ✭✭✭✭

    If you're that worried then maybe you shouldn't have friends that you don't know?

  • The only opsec issue I can think of is:

    1. From the social screen, other players find out what your Pokemon Go player name is.
    2. On PoGo, they noticed that you took over a gym in a particular area. This could be through coincidence, but more likely it's through something that violates ToS.

    I recall once we were at a restaurant intending to farm after dinner. Everyone was good with opsec, but a few players took over a gym, which alerted an opposition player who happened to be there for dinner with his family. So everyone was surprised when we started building and immediately got attack notifications. He was nice about it, we said hi, had a laugh over it, and he let us farm in peace.

  • I’m appalled, and I haven’t played PoGo since the beta.

  • WikiBlueWikiBlue ✭✭✭

    I'm looking forward for this feature to become available in Ingress, let's check who plays PoGo while claiming the don't 😋

    #sarcasm

  • silverkalisilverkali ✭✭✭
    edited July 2020

    On my Social page it doesn't even show the correct days that I last played on all three of the games and I've switched off the online toggle so I don't think it can accidentally give any opsec info useful for Ingress.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2020

    I'd say the only chance for an OpSec leak is for the feature to show online live status. It hasn't been clarified how does the feature work, but if this is not how it works then perhaps there is no risk.

    Still, I don't like the idea of friends having access to my last login, some people get really nuts if you don't open up their presents daily!

    It would be best to just make it optional, just like Ingress agent profile.

  • Actually not ironic.

    Niantic incentivized having 200 random people send you gifts. By making 101 people your "Best Friend", you can level from 1 to 40. So the Social aspect of Niantic Social is already counter productive.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thank you @NianticBrian for the quick response!

    I hope this will be opt-in for all games.

  • aaronviannoaaronvianno ✭✭✭✭

    Right... It's always a game of shielding multi-accounters.

    The few hours that it was up showed us who was using multiple account and who was using DeFit.

  • Could it please be made to disable showing which games you play on a game by game basis?


    Even if it doesn't show my Ingress Tag on there showing that I play Ingress at all will create more problems than you can imagine for me do to the toxicity in our area. You're endangering players by doing this. All it would take is one random PoGo friend who doesn't understand the complexity of Ingress sharing a Screenshot of my Niantic Social page showing I play Ingress at all & then suddenly all my work to keept seperate IDs & play each game in different areas at different times will be for nothing.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    What I just don't want to share friends between games? Is not just a matter of backpacks.

    Besides, to reveal backpacks you would require to have several PoGO accounts to the same friend and then this friend would need to tell someone on Ingress about that. And it would still mean nothing since so many people justified that backpack already for its public use!

    Does Niantic have the necessary to reveal suspicious activities? We have all seen that yes they do! So why don't they take actions? I'd answer the question with another question: have they ever taken any actions against multiaccs?

    Some say they have, but I've been playing several years already and haven't ever witnessed a single ban for multiaccounting.

This discussion has been closed.