Cheaters Suspended, Legit Players Terminated
MagpieMind
✭✭
in General
Why is Niantic letting people who they have (apparently) caught using third party tools to scrape data have their accounts back after a 7 day suspension while agents that just aren't terribly active are getting terminated with no recourse?
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Care to provide details?
this will go well. how does stuff like this usually play out on a forum...? 3 bans, 4 timeouts and a locked thread?
I got straw for all agents who want to use strawman arguments
Yeah, I'm not really expecting any real response from Niantic. Both terminated accounts appealed through the service bot and the response to "my account has been terminated even though I've done nothing wrong" was an automated "your account has been terminated and we won't tell you why".
{Monkeys select auto}[Francisco/lambert/sofonisba/sandro/angelico/paolo/titan/...]@niantic-help.com
Hello agent,
Blablabla blablabla [insert ban reason] and as a result, we have put a temporary hold on
We welcome your further participation in Ingress as long as you strictly adhere to the Ingress Terms of Service (https://www.nianticlabs.com/terms/) and Ingress Community Guidelines (https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/ingress/?p=web&s=agent-protocol&f=ingress-community-guidelines). We insist you treat other players and bystanders with respect and courtesy and conduct yourself in an appropriate manner while playing Ingress. We encourage you to also review the Agent Protocol (https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/ingress/?p=web&s=agent-protocol&f=agent-protocol). These guidelines and protocols are in place to ensure that you and other players have a great experience playing Ingress and that others are not affected by your gameplay.
Keeping ingress fun
🤪
{Monkeys select auto}[Francisco/lambert/sofonisba/sandro/angelico/paolo/titan/...]@niantic-help.com
Hello again,
Thanks for writing back.
We will not be able to disclose the procedures followed before taking actions and the source of our reports are confidential. Rest assured, we will conduct a thorough investigation before taking any actions.
We request you to play in accordance with Agent Protocol to keep Ingress fun for everyone.
Your understanding and patience in this are highly appreciated.
Regards,
Keeping ingress fun
Niantic terminate account just if a single player is reported from many accounts. He don't take a look to see what app we use for play because then can be a problem with GDPR. They terminated account and don't get you a answer about what app you use and is not OK because there is not app that is not OK. You can use only apps from google play and you will have a surprise when second day weak up on the morning with the account terminated for no reasson. I have 2 account with more that 2000 km walked and terminated with no reason from niantic. Is a really shame what they do. My last account was closed because I annalise portals for a community and I wasn't approved ugly street grafitys and playgrounds that not exist on agents home. Thank you Niantic for be so honest with the rules with people's involved in portal quality development. P.S. More that 800 portals created be my. And more than 2300 analysed on opr, FS events hosted and supported with IFSK-100 packages.
@MagpieMind I'm happy to ask Ops to look into it. Based on your comments in this thread, I'll need to know more than what you've said so far, "...agents that just aren't terribly active are getting terminated with no recourse"
@lnstinct230 from the sound of it, you've contributed a lot to Ingress. Thank you. There are some reasons Ops can't share details, but we'd like to increase the transparency, when we can, over time. If you'd like to share your accounts that were terminated I can ask Ops to look into them. I'd be very surprised if they were in fact terminated for no reason...though maybe for a reason that can't be shared.
I was already make a appeal but nobody tell me what is wrong..... That is frustred because right now I can start a new account and after another time lost I get another ban without to know what is wrong. Can I send you to private the accounts detail somewhere?
It's pretty clear that niantic doesn't really care, i didn't play too much ingress due to the lack of time, but now i'll definitely stop playing this game.
This pretty much sums up the gaming environment, we agree with their faulty Terms and Conditions, and after we put in the time to level up, we might end up getting banned for no reason.
It's fishy and frustrating when they don't even tell you the reason you got banned for, because "this is their policy" with which you agreed before starting to play. Looks like niantic is using the same methods as the betting websites which, guess what, can also terminate your account "for no reason" and take all your money.
Since they give you a bunch of reasons listed in the email you receive, does not mean that there is in fact a reason, other that a group of people wanted you out of the picture and reported you.In some cases the players might not even have a fault, if players suspect that you are cheating they will report you cause that's what they can do, but it's your duty as the company who manages the game to check properly the reports..
Hi @NianticScot
That would be fantastic if you'd be willing. Both my son (level 3) and my sister (level 2) had their accounts terminated with no warning. Is there a way to DM their account information to you? I'm on Telegram as MagpieMind if that's a useful way to connect.
MM
@MagpieMind 1 player per house-hold only. More than that, you're unsafe. After that you already tagged as a cheater who has more than 1 account. So decide who's gonna be the one playing Ingress in your house, lol. 🤦♂️
@SouLPrison3r and then you can not live with the family? And if my brothers want to play, they do it since they are in their right, cheat can call the one who uses more than one account in the same mobile phone. But if you want to play with your family, it would not be a problem, because then those who play in cars with their friends are cheaters because they have advantages in speed.🤷🏻♂️
Dear agents..
we all know which faction's agents are terminated,
we all know which portals get back with the " NIA GAME MASTER"
we all know which portals get back to the faction with its LINKS AND FIELDS
we all know which faction has cheaters and who's behind their back
we all know how Niantic works :) Greetings...
@GatoMas7er Tell that to Niantic. I was just summing up what Niantic tos basically meant.
p.s: What about the same ip? I mean you guys do use wifi, right?
@NianticScot can you please help me to re-check the terminated accounts? One is terminated now more that 2 years. And the second one is terminated last week. From the information that i got the accounts was closed because selling items or something like that (nothing more false, i dont have items for sell because in my city are just few agents and i help him to grow up for free). I will be more that greatfull if you can help me with a recheck. Btw, i dont recive any warning before, just a email that inform me my account is terminated, without a reasson exaclly. Thank you. Have a great day. Telegram: @ktalin230, In the past i was colaborate with Matilde for support but now unfortunately she is not part of Niantic team any more :( .
@nianticscot Heya, just following up on your offer to help. What's the best way to get you the information you need?
MM
I never understood this whole "we can't tell you why we banned you." I get why Niantic doesn't want to make certain things public, to limit the counter-measures they have to face when dealing with the core cheaters. Then again, imho, even something as large and systemic as say TBG, and they were mostly silent on what happened and why it happened. IMHO, Niantic still owes the community an explanation on TBG and what happened to the leaders of it, and what happened to individual players who had access and used it. I know a few local players who were on the leaked lists and nothing happened to them.
As an anecdote: I work in IT support. I have talked to users who were caught torrenting/violating copyright and their access to our enterprise network promptly revoked. I was allowed to be as specific to these users as I needed to be to get across to them they may not under any circumstances violate laws/copyright/use the network in any way which violates company policy. Granted we don't tell other people to protect the identity of the the person. But we can most certainly talk openly about it with the person, and we could acknowledge that these violations exist and not to do them.
Even big-name games will publicly acknowledge why a big name players for their game/product was banned/suspended. Valve/steam/ESL says when players are banned in CSGO for cheating. Blizzard will be public and open that a publicly known cheater was banned for cheating. Even twitch will acknowledge individual bans.
@ViolaRose a few years ago, we had a big spoofer problem locally, with a few players unleashing dozens of bots every day. Some of those were banned, but others had persisted for years, reaching level 13, while teleporting everywhere to take down farms, guardians and fields. Probably hundreds of reports, for nothing. Finally, the accounts were banned. Immediately they put up a sob story on G+ on how Ingress is unfair and they are just "hardcore" players, and they were unfairly treated and reported. Again, this wasn't even a real players' G+ account, it was created for one of the bots. And other players in the International community ate it up - they were outraged, they took their defense, they again stated how Niantic is so unfair.
The idea is that cheaters and trolls exist, and because of them we can't have nice things.
Banned cheater: "OMG, Niantic banned me for no reason, I'm a hardcore player, I went to anomalies"
Niantic: sends private message about why they banned him
Banned cheater: "OMG, Niantic did not gave me any reason for my ban, I am innocent!!!1111!!!!"
Everyone: "Niantic sucks!!"
Niantic: *makes the ban info public"
Banned cheater: "Oh, that info is all wrong, I never did those things, Niantic is just lying to cover up their ineptitude!!!111!!!"
Everyone: "Niantic sucks, and we'll sue them if they reveal this kind of personal information!!"
This would go on forever, with all the poor guys that were banned by mistake being drown in a sea of cheaters that try to convince people that they too are innocent.
@NianticScot So? You can help me or not? :)
Clearly, the amount of human workforce is higher in big companies.
Also, the amount of tickets is proportionally lower. This is because they usually have a strong, effective punishment system.
Think of how many tickets you have opened for Ingress Support and how many tickets have you opened for any other game.
I personally have lost more than 4 accounts 15 months ago, for no reason. The last 3 were 24 hour accounts that got to lvl4 and got the ban mail the next day. I was playing with a 2015 phone running custom oreo rom as there were no official updates. To this day i dont know what caused the bans. The help center was of no help and i only stopped getting banned after changing phones. They still call me a cheater to this day.
6 months ago something similar happened to a teamate. His account banned for no reason on a prime only account. Heavily reported after capturing a mountain peak by butthurt people. Niantic even flipped the portal to NIAgamemaster. The twist to this story is the banned agent had photos from the peak. He sent the to out telegram group before getting banned, not to prove something, but to show us the view. Even sent videos of the hike.
He appealed and got an answer 9 minutes later saying the ban was permanent.
2 weeks ago the exact same thing happened to another agent capturing a difficult peak and getting heavily reported by the toxic community. He too had photos but not videos. The portal wasnt flipped to NIAgamemaster and as he was waiting for his appeal decision he made another account and changed device per my advice. His new account got banned in less than 40 hours. Sent appeal again and waited.
We tried to reach everyone we knew for help and he was approached by someone on telegram asking for proof.
After a few days he got his account back but his second was found to have cheated and banned permanently.
Now you can believe what im saying or dismiss it as a cry from a cheater who got caught and can't deal with getting banned.
The truth is, there's something very wrong with how the company deals with bans and the anti cheat mechanics have serious flaws.
@MagpieMind @Instinct230 curious if you ever got any further follow-up after responding multiple times to this message from @NianticScot without anything further posted here. You don't have to share any details; I'm just wondering if they communicated privately, even if it was just that they couldn't give you any further information after all.
my account was termined few days ago. I appealed - result final decision was taken - you are out of the game.
but I never did anything wrong, no spoofing, no usage of 3rd party Sw, original iphone used, no selling of items... I do not have any idea why my account was terminated.
now all my questions in robochat are ignored (as tsted - final decision).
but honestly - now I feel like idiot - I was fair player and I'm out. No explanation. I am receiving questions from community - why are you not playing? what shall I say - you know I am one of 22k cheaters? out of which 99.6% were real cheaters therefore no game for them and myself?
I asked fot all my data according to GDPR, perhaps I will find something there, but what????
@Xlxao
No reason for you to feel like an idiot over this. If everything you're saying is true, it's Niantic screwing you over, they're the ones at fault. They're more trusting of their blind data analysis at this point, instead of being human. The only dumb thing would be to start up another account at this point. If they're banning you for playing legit, why give them another opportunity to do it again?
Over my years playing, the only ones I ever see come back are the ones who actually were cheating, because they know they can get away with it for awhile before they get caught. The legit players know better and don't bother with the game anymore.
thank you for fair view. I am still waiting for Nia to return my account back. I am not going to start again. I was just on lvl 10 (+.5) and after that achievemnt I was trying to create portals in our rural area for fair play possibility for us. not onla city guys.
Nia behavior is for me strange, even I can understand partly, that they do not want to show how they founf cheaters but as far as I know in our community tha banned guys were fair guys as I was.
@SeaFoamSoul - No, I never heard anything back from @NianticScot
I think most of the agents do somthing wrong. Use more than 1 accout or buy items. No local agents in my town banned with the new system when they follow Niantic rules and not buy items and only play with 1 account. Minimum age for Ingress Prime are 13 years old. Niantic can ban if agents under 13 years old play Ingress Prime and they get ticket about it.
I was banned and did nothing wrong, so was my sister. We played together a LOT. We even have exactly the same phones. I tried to appeal but kept being told decision is final.
I am completely addicted to this game so I did start another account but I will not put money in it as I had frackers and key lockers and money in the banned account. If this new account gets banned I won't start another however.
Has anybody who has been banned and appeals dismissed asked for a GDPR data dump including asking for all data used to make the decision on account suspension and rejection of appeals? There are serious fines for non compliance with a GDPR request and individuals have the right to seek compensation for a failure to comply.