Ingress is disabled in my country by a single person

Hello all,

I am an aspiring Ingress player (yes I know, very late to the party) but I really enjoy the game. However, my experience so far with the game has been very lackluster and surprisingly it is both Niantic's fault and not Niantic's fault.


The problem here is that there is a single person which is known by eye witnesses to spoof and multi-account. The problem with this guy is not that he does all these. The problem is that this guy goes overboard by covering the WHOLE COUNTRY with fields, rendering the game useless for both factions. Some of the portals he uses are even inaccessible to the public.


We have reported him multiple times but to no avail. Needless to say this post is for the island of cyprus in the mediterranean sea (eastern europe) and anyone with half a brain will understand what's going on by just looking at the country through the intel map.

Coordinates: 34.898322 , 33.530211

The island is also split in half due to a past war and actually visiting the northern part is really hard to do, especially with the restrictions placed during the pandemic.

We don't know what else to do, we just want to play normally. Thank you for your attention and please help us battle this situation with suggestions on what we should do

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Comments

  • InerasIneras ✭✭✭

    I'm sorry for what is happening in your country. I think your story deserves more attention. Please consider sending your story to Eurogamer and Polygon. While your situation is different from that of Salamis Island, more publicity of Ingress's fielding rules and spoofing could lead to meaningful changes that players have been asking for.

    In the meantime, contact a trusted reporter. Good luck and don't give up.

  • I'm sorry this is happening in you country. I think the only solution is to report this player accounts hopping Niantic will do something.

    This happened in my zone and finally after 4 reports this player is playing legally without keeping large fields and without spoofing.

  • Thank you for your support and attention I will definitely try and do that! I will not give up for sure

    It's sad that this is happening all over the place

  • gazzas89gazzas89 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Hes missed a corner lol. But yeah, that sucks, if you report hopefully niantic will get him

  • Don't worry he usually takes that corner as well. It just happened that he forgot to recharge his resonators

  • Why would Niantic not immediately respond to situations like this? If people can't play they're game arent they loosing money?

  • We already reported the guy en masse but it didn't seem to matter much. Nothing has changed in a period of some months now...

  • Players would have to be paying money, for Niantic to loose it.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    this is the main problem with perma fields like this legit setup or by bots, new players ore exisiting even will just quit since u cant play normal under such... niantic should consider change this maybe...

  • Niantic should do more research in any inaccessible portals and remove any or disable any if affect the gameplay during the tough times

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    Mass reporting really isn't useful, and at least one Niantic employee has said that we shouldn't do it because it just creates more work for them.

    Your best bet is to report through the Trusted Reporter system.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you want to highlight suspected spoofing activity to the Trusted Reporters, follow these steps.

    -Do not submit actions to Trusted Reporters that are over seven (7) days old.


    -Enlightened: @IngressEnlTRBot

    -Resistance: @IngressResTRBot

    -Using Telegram, send a “/start” message to your faction specific Trusted Reporter bot account. Submitting a report to the opposite factions bot may get you banned from using the bot:

    -Complete the four action items listed by the bot.


    -Within 48 hours a Trusted Reporter will review the activity you flagged and inform you via the bot that they will or will not escalate the activity to NIA OPS to review.


    [...] At this time we are only accepting reports of accounts suspected of spoofing. For all other support related issues please submit a ticket via the normal process at http://support.ingress.com.

  • I agree the spoofing and multiaccount should be squashed by Niantic. Unless something had changed, portals do not have to be publicly accessible right? I've seen lots of portals on military bases where general members of the public can't go. Back in Florida, there are many portals at Cape Canaveral, some are only accessible if you pay the entrance fee. Some are only accessible to NASA employees with a reason to be at the spot. The lighthouse is accessible by water I think, but not by land without a badge.

    However, this is just being a ****.

  • I know this experience. someone covered my whole city (510,000 citizens) with a giant greens field. Thankfully, my team got some high level players to destroy it in a week.

  • Your best bet is to start keeping a detailed log of their actions and prove without a doubt that they are spoofing.

    For instance, if they manage to go from one portal to the next impossibly fast. Provide driving maps showing every possible path and the time required and explain what it should take and what they did.

    Or, if they go into dawn to dusk parks after hours (trespassing). And provide any supporting photos, links, etc to support your claims.

    If you can prove with solid evidence that they are cheating, Niantic is more likely to pay attention.

    Otherwise, they may just assume you are just salty because you don't have the same access, permissions, or mobility as the player you are accusing.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2020

    I'm sorry, but that is fully wrong, Niantic does not review any proof aside intel map and acitivity.

    But, if you get special treatment from them, perhaps you should promote to Vanguard!

    Yes, as briefly discussed in this thread, Spoofing and Multiaccounting have always been the most destructive cheats. But is it even a cheat if no sanction is applied?

  • You say the agent is spoofing. But what if the agent is also tresspassing. Real world tresspass. Niantic would be complacent with this trespassing... depending on your countries laws or your local jurisdiction. Or both.

    Sppofing isnt tolerated, but tresppass is????

  • RostwoldRostwold ✭✭✭✭✭

    Breaking local laws is something for local police to deal with. Surely you can't expect Niantic to operate a worldwide police force that enforces every different local set of trespass laws in every jurisdiction on the planet?

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    IN THEORY, if you prove that tresspassing is required to touch the portal, Niantic SHOULD apply saction.

    But if Niantic doesn't pay attention to your proofs of spoofing... proving a tresspasing is even harder!

  • BlaumutBlaumut ✭✭✭✭

    Negative. Niantic does not care about trespassing. All the communities can provide at least one example of this kind of action and the lack of answer from Niantic.

  • I have a very good record on spoofer reports, 95pc banned, including one banned 2mins after he dropped a mega field and publicly admitted spoofing. I will try to contact you to get the details and help you report in a way that will prove the case.

    Very important are screenshots showing comms actions, travel time estimates to the relevant portals, and in some cases, photos showing a desolate portal when actions apparently occurred. Good luck, hope you get some action on this.

  • Cyprus looks all better after your post @Soliscy13 Best of luck 😊

  • Actually that is the option to contact the local cops. Niantic cooperates with law enforcement. Per their TOS.

    But law enforcement would love the ability to track people who are tresspassing. Trying to explain that would sound stupid.

    But i can sound stupid in an email and rhen describe a legal procees that highway departments use cell phones to track road speeds. On highways and reader boards.

    The cops can use this same laws and tech as it is identifying a tresspasser and not a person. Or they could be poaching on a closed wildlife refuge.

    They person was hunting snipes at night.

  • I don't know if there is no option for it, or I just can't edit the original post. Anyway, here is an update:

    I have contacted some Vanguards, which have been super helpful (@MysticalGnu huge thanks).

    Needless to say, I had my doubts that spoofing would be banned (since in PoGo is rampant and no one ever got banned besides them being careless with the automatic ban system). However, I have been pleasantly surprised by the huge amount of support and uproar that this story caused, resulting in the spoofer being banned in a matter of less than a day!

    I am happy to report that Ingress is once again playable and a small resurgence of new and old agents has already started! I thought this game was dead in my country but it seems it was just in a comma due to the whole country being held hostage by a single obnoxious individual.

    Thanks again for your huge support!

    As for the inaccessible portals that this spoofer used, NOT ALL of them were inaccessible. Some of them were inaccessible all year round (due to being closed to personnel only areas etc) and some of them are temporarily inaccessible due to the enforced pandemic lockdown, some are accessible but in very remote areas that few people visit due to no road networks or rough terrain that required special outdoors-oriented vehicles. As far as I know and understand, all portals should be publicly accessible to be considered valid. The word "publicly" available seems to be debated, but as far as I am concerned "publicly" means by the general public which in extension are all people, without requiring special access passes due to very specific circumstances (e.g. working there).

    For example, there was a portal utilized by the spoofer, located on some artificially placed rocks which were installed to protect a private port from the waves. There were two portals, a small lighthouse and a signal light for the ports entrance. To go there you had to have access to the port and get inside and sail your boat close to the entrance or swim there from outside the port. The other way of getting there was to be an employee of the private port, since even boat/yacht owners were not allowed to go to the lighthouse on foot. I would not call those two portals "publicly accessible". Long story short, we ported those portals as inaccessible a few times but since the report is just that, a report, with no accompanying text or ways to prove your point, the appeal was declined every time.


    All in all this story had a happy ending (as of now, we don't know if the spoofer will ever return) but this situation could have been prevented if better safeguards were placed. The spoofer was very obvious and didn't even try to hide the fact, maybe that's why the resolution was so fast. It was so obvious that when confronted in the in-game chat, the agent resorted to admitting that the account was shared between multiple people in order to justify the ridiculous jumps in impossible times (even though some of us personally knew the agent and we knew that it was spoofing).

    Anyways, this has been a long post but there goes the perspective of a new player trying to enjoy the game.

  • hiryuhiryu ✭✭✭

    Yeah, unfortunately "publicly accessible" means something different to Niantic than you might expect. It just has to be accessible in "some capacity," and that's defined very broadly. Accessible only if you're a guest of an employee? Valid. Accessible only if you pay a zillion dollar club membership? Valid. Accessible only if you join a one-year volunteer program to clean bird droppings from lighthouses? Valid. Accessible only during a solar eclipse? Valid. I guess it's part of the original mystique of the game that you may have to go to some extremes to reach these portals. So I doubt you'll have much luck removing them.

    Anyways, glad to hear your spoofer has been shut down for now!

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