[HK] You may be kidding: Allowing an Agent to have multiple accs, and spoofing between HK and Taiwan

littlewilittlewi ✭✭
edited December 2021 in General

Related report ref: # 14802592, 14802660, 14806709, 14806804, 14806820, ,14806889, 14807061, 14807072, 14807141, 14807275, 14807283, 15723510, 15723972, 15724022, 15724055, 15724127, 15724131, 15724161, 15724211, 15724221, 15724244


tl;dr: the Group of 13 accounts operate by the same person, is spoofing between HK and Taiwan for at least 3 months.


I write to express my great concern that a group of accounts, which are believed to be controlled by a single person in Pingtung, Taiwan, continuously spoofed between Hong Kong and Taiwan for almost three months!

The group consists of below accounts (in which there might be possibility that more accounts might be controlled by the same person, the list is not exhaustive):

ENL: ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****

RES: ****, ****, ****


Note that these accounts have similar naming pattern (e.g. start with ****/ ****, end with numbers) and they often paired up for their operations.


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1. The group of accounts first appeared in Chai Wan, Hong Kong on around 7 September 2021. These accounts, at first, capture some unclaimed Portals near Chai Wan Au (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.273269,114.23623&z=17&pll=22.272423,114.235395) in which there were seldom Agents would go. Soon the Portals around these areas were quickly filled to become ENL Level 8 Portals with all Resonators 4belong to the above group of ENL accounts.

These accounts had then raised concerns by both Hong Kong and Taiwan RES Agents, in which Taiwan Agents even commented on the behavior of spoofing and farming in Hong Kong:

(Translation: King happens to "run" to Hong Kong to farm items. So "superb"! And he attacks Portals in Hong Kong!)

Several attempts of reporting the group of Agents through Niantic support was done starting from September 2021. For me, I submitted the reports with ticker numbers below in September 2021:

****- 14802592

****- 14802660

****- 14806709

****- 14806804

****- 14806820

****- 14806889 

****- 14807061

****- 14807072

****- 14807141

****- 14807275

Report of multiple accounts operation - 14807283

These reports filed on September, but was quickly replied by your "Lambert" (oh **** is Lambert again without doing appropriate action for these accounts) and the cases were closed.

After two months later, two new ENL accounts and one RES account appeared and trained up to Level 8: ****(ENL), ****(ENL), ****(RES) and they also spoofed between Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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2. How these accounts spoof.

(i) These accounts operate between Hong Kong and Pingtung, Taiwan. Often they jumped from Hong Kong to Taiwan (and vice versa) around 1-3 days, but some within a shorter time.

Take examples of the logs of **** on 18-19 December 2021:

18 December 2021: 23:45 **** linked Hong Kong Buddhist Cemetery (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.256953,114.233279) to Chaiwan Masjid (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.259313,114.233212)

19 December 2021: 10:24 **** destroyed a Resonator on 水舞間噴水池 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.635105,120.346329)

18:17 **** linked 柏架山引水道C25 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.27387,114.223683) to 派膠器 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.276562,114.226143)

22:00 **** destroyed a Control Field @潮州三和里社區公園 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.556835,120.539618) -1479 MUs

You may see that **** had been travelling between Hong Kong and Kaohsiung, Taiwan and attempted to perform actions in the urban areas of both cities within 24 hours! Owing to COVID-19, given the Quarantine policies in both cities (e.g. https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/inbound-travel.html), a normal Agent from Taiwan would not be able to travel within Hong Kong before staying in Quarantine hotel for at least 14 days! Thus, from the logical sense, **** would definitely be a spoofer.

Similar instances could be noted for other accounts from time to time, and would be added here for information.

(ii) Spoofing at impossible travel time.

The group of Accounts would spoof in an impossible travel time.

For example, for ****, the account performed actions at around 9-10PM on 7 December 2021 at around the area of https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.259181,114.238546:

You may wish to know that the spoofer performed actions at night jumping from different points of cemetery in Chai Wan, Hong Kong and the residential area outside cemetery, within 20 minutes. There is no public transport at some points of the cemetery. The environment of the cemetery at night is totally dark without lighting facilities. Below is the street view from one of the points in the cemetery for your purview:

https://www.google.com/maps/@22.2577552,114.2395531,3a,75y,27.99h,69.53t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPZMCXx4AIBNyT5ZAHQAGtA7ueSkIfy7ybAIWEY!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPZMCXx4AIBNyT5ZAHQAGtA7ueSkIfy7ybAIWEY%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya165.72737-ro-0-fo100!7i5660!8i2830

Another example by **** on 19 December 2021 also showed ridiculous log that showed the spoofer was without understanding of the geological features between Portals.

18:14 **** deployed a Resonator on 耀東公共圖書館 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.276895,114.225861)

18:17 **** linked 柏架山引水道C25 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.27387,114.223683) to 派膠器 (https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=22.276562,114.226143)

Yiu Tung Public Library (the Portal 耀東公共圖書館) is located at the lower part of a hill with altitude of 49m. The Portal 柏架山引水道C25 is located at a location with altitude of 210m. There is no direct vehicular access between two points. The route on foot would require around 50 minutes estimated by Google Maps (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/22.276895,114.225861/22.27387,114.223683/@22.2746367,114.22607,17z/data=!4m6!4m5!1m1!4e1!1m1!4e1!3e2?hl=en) but **** could go within 3 minutes!

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3. Allowing such actions by the group of these Agents - and your game servers - had been seriously impacting gameplay experience. I wonder if Niantic would take appropriate actions on these accounts given that they had been continuously travelling from HK to Taiwan within a short interval for many many times. I earnestly invite @NianticKK@NianticKK@NianticThia, @NianticBrian, @NianticCasey@NianticCasey@halette @halette or other appropriate persons to look into the case and provide us an appropriate reply.

I would also be willing to furnish further information regarding these accounts if anyone wishes.

Post edited by NianticVK on

Comments

  • Living with spoofer becomes a part of agent‘s playing experience🥱

  • @NianticVK May I know about the reasons of blurring these codenames and removing most of the diagrams captured in Intel?

  • kamsirkamsir ✭✭
    edited December 2021

    Today as of this moment spoofers **** **** **** **** **** **** (all ENL accounts)performed actions in the area concerned in this post

    Post edited by NianticVK on
  • @NianticVK again you still mask these accounts without explanation! Can you please don't mask the names of these accounts? You are protecting them instead of handling spoofers!

    @NianticVK if you still keep on masking and don't do anything to handle the situation, I will escalate the issue to other player community. Thank you.

  • Simply the action of them is protecting spoofer and encouraging them.

    What a shame 😏

  • ArtilectZedArtilectZed ✭✭✭✭✭

    Reacquaint yourself with the player guidelines. https://nianticlabs.com/guidelines/en/

    Posting their names here falls under "defame" (and I would argue abuse and harassment, as well). It's up to Niantic to determine what to do with the reports, and what action to take.

    Why do I say this? Because I've seen people lose access to comm, and temp banned from the game for a while. It's not worth it to get yourself banned because you wanted to call someone else out for cheating.

  • littlewilittlewi ✭✭
    edited December 2021

    Then, no wonder why Niantic is losing players in this game.

    Player cheating is a major issue. The spoofer keeps jumping between two places of different countries and 800km apart, daily and sometimes hourly, and played 10 accounts. Yet while I wish to bring out the issue for other players' concern and help reporting together for cheaters, @NianticVK keeps deleting pics from my previous posts to disallow meaningful contributions for the discussions. What a shame.

  • littlewilittlewi ✭✭
    edited December 2021

    In addition, please be noted that not only me in sharing those apparently spoofers in the forums. In past, sometimes NIA staffs don't delete codenames, and in one instance, a player got some punishment after his spoofing behaviour was brought in the forum for discussion.

  • ArtilectZedArtilectZed ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2021

    The games been running for over 9 years now. That anyone at all is still playing is a small miracle in and of itself.

    The cheaters have been an issue since almost day one, though. You can rise up above what they're doing and be a better player, or you can sink down to their level and play dirty (by breaking the "Treat others with respect" rule), too. Being a better player is more rewarding, in my opinion.

    As for someone else being called out for it and it not being moderated in the same way, well again, Niantic does as Niantic pleases. The rules are posted and we all agreed to them when we started playing. Don't break the rules because someone else did. The forums will get nasty if people start doing that constantly.

  • MoAngusMoAngus ✭✭
    edited December 2021

    Far from it be me to be cynical, but I can’t help but seething with indignation when the coward succumbs, or more appropriately, grovels to the spoofers.

    There has been a plethora of evidence given by @littlewi  and @kamsir  (with a bit of luck @NianticVK  won’t blur their names) that the mentioned similar-patterned codenames were questionable with their frequent logs that high-key travelled to Hong Kong and Taiwan without quarantine. While the wretched players have already sent thousands of voluminous reports, as detailed as their logs, Google map suggested time of travel, quarantine rules, and other proofs, the Niantic Support made an even more enormous effort in replying to them that - "Yes, we have received them and directly transferred them to the spam box." Dandy!

    And now, the despaired-to-be agents manage to stop the interminable unfair gameplay and reports by writing publicly and inviting you to escalate the case. So kind and wonderful are you to show that you have carefully read it by making NO comments and actions but masking the codenames of the spoofers and the Intel screenshots which prove their guilts. Hilarious!

    The lesson to be learnt today: we can simply solve the problems by "solving" the ones that raised them.

  • edited December 2021

    While I appreciate you all for putting your efforts in and reporting the Agents that are violating the Terms of Service, it'd be much appreciated if this can be reported via In-app support. It's mostly to keep away the 'toxicness'(not sure if this is an actual word), but I hope you all get my point.

    Like I mentioned in another thread a while back, cheating is not okay, and please continue reporting such issues via In-app support.

    That being said, even though the names are obfuscated, we still will be able to see the names or pictures that were removed by us.

    And I'm closing this thread for future comments.

    Y'all have a good day!

This discussion has been closed.