That's the type I'm asking about. Most of the time the multi-accounting beyond backpacks tends to be account sharing, with one person using their family members accounts etc, but they don't seem to be heavily used in a way Niantic could identify easily. The "10 accounts one person, all L8+" seems to be rarer, unless they're actually spoofing.
For days we have been reporting a group of players who use fake GPS and break our main portals. The niantic "support" keeps closing tickets without doing anything! I wonder if the tickets are really read by someone or just closed automatically. I spend more time reporting than playing, improve support, otherwise only bots and fake accounts will remain playing
If this thread is about spoofing, you might want to check the map, specifically in Russia (where I thought playing is restricted at the moment)... There's quite fresh player account fielding 11million MU fields from Finland to Moscow to Ukraine to Kazakhstan 😉
I just started playing. I LITERALLY never would fathom humans puting forth the extream effort to spoof. As I'm playing more. I'm learning there is alot of toxic crazy stuff.
Lightship is what I assumed is the framework.
Clearly wildly underestimated the amount of people who spoof and cheat. Thabk you for the warm welcome.
Never saw in other games anyone asking other players to "do some reverse engineering and fix the problems by yourselves" instead of the company's doing their jobs. To do what you said, players have to hack into the production system that is Niantic's server first, which leads to jail.
Last time I checked niantic rather keep spoofs and cheats when they are paid subscribers. Support is bad in general and this also adds no value, as names and claims will get redacted.
Another waste of effort, to not solve any issues, is what I read here.
Whether or not a player pays subscription does not influence the decision to ban or not to ban. We have seen plenty of subscribed accounts being banned. It is not taken into account when investigating a report.
In Utah we have widespread and constant spoofing of strategic and remote portals in addition to urban ones. The spoof accounts and their collaborators troll and dox and players when we call them out in COMMs. In addition Niantic chat bans us for calling out their spoofing. We submit many spoof reports and frequently include pictures and videos. Most reports receive the standard form reply and nothing happens. Many people have quit playing because of this. It severely affects the game.
Is Niantic actively doing anything to address the problem?
Does Niantic have plans to do more?
Is there any channel for collaborating/sharing ideas with Niantic on how to address the problem? I have a number of ideas I'd be happy to share.
100% this. The activity in the SLC area is adversely affecting players on both sides, and the COMMs are clogged with he-said / she-said accusations, denials, and downright anger. We have had some luck with getting the Trolls reported for inappropriate Agent Names, but the spoofing seems to be untouchable.
A few months ago we had a group of spoofers that was banned fairly rapidly, but this set is bulletproof for some unknown reason. I was hoping the "new" continuous detection that was announced for PoGo was going to help here. No luck yet...
Note that "Calling them out on COMM" is well defined as harassment, and the old "Two wrongs does not make a right" thing applies. The trick is to call them out in non-Niantic spheres. The only thing Niantic looks at COMM for is harassment, so they're not reading your text unless notified, and all it does is give the spoofers something to report.
Another old adage: If you don't have anything nice to say... stay off COMM or they'll bait you into getting banned.
Well, it's nice to see I'm not alone at the party! I have never imagined that people coul be so creative for cheating in games, especially multiplayer games (let's be honest, is there any multiplayer game which is not completely devastated by cheaters?). However, I am probably superficial and ignorant, but sometimes I find NIA pretty naïve: I mean, I filed dozens of reports against spoofers and happily had most of them banned, but my God, it is a full time job! The reports must contain specific information, a Vanguard must be involved (nope, don't tell me that someone reads our ingame reports, I don't believe it: the only reports taken in consideration are those from the Vanguards, reporting ingame is completely pointless... Or has anyone here ever had a spoofer banned thanks to one of those?). Then, you must wait for the ban to happen (IF it happens) and then collect all the links to the portals you need to be restored... Meanwhile, your same faction and the opposite faction have already xlinked everywhere and a new fake account is ready to go. I mean... Is it really necessary, to file everything manually? I saw spoofers playing, most of the time they travel super fast: how come that they are not automatically banned? And why, after they've been banned, why a Vanguard has to file all the portals for resets MANUALLY? It's just a waste of time to me and I believe it could be automated. If a portal has been spoofed, of course I want it to be restored, why do I need to even send a request?
Then, I don't understand if wintrading and multi-accounting is considered cheating or not. I guess it's hard to detect when a player is using their family members selfphones as mule accounts, but let's be honest.... Most of the time it's not them playing, it's the player who switches to different accounts on the same device or uses different devices: I guess this could be easily detected too, considering that we agree to share our data as well. Wintrading I guess has become the norm now, considered the number of xfac messages on the comm saying "please don't destroy this portal", "would you mind to help me for pokéstop", "let's arrange to level up/do x event" etc... And on a larger scale, I have encountered more and more agents from my very same faction who blatantly play against, especially during main events. Imagine you've just come back home, after building up a field and you receive a notification saying that an agent from your same faction has killed the field: you contact them and what they say is that "I am not crazy like you, I just want to get the medal but without going out and play, I want to play from my hp and your field has been up long enough". I mean, using the same colour advantage to play against, shouldn't be considered cheating as well?
Finally, what I am so sick of, are those cheating-ish situations, where magically the GPS signal drifts away soooo conveniently... I struggle to find safe portals for my fields, but there are players that according to their time travel are able to pass through fences and walls. I swear, I found myself in front of closed public parks at night, with the portal right in the middle: you may phisically reach it by jumping over the fence of course, but it takes time. These players, they manage to reach the portals in no time. Since are specific players who are able to do so, I am quite convinced that there are ways to slightly temper the GPS signal... And no, I am not talking of "oh my phone, if you turn off the gps and back on it drifts so much"... I mean steady placing yourself on the portal and attacking it for a while. How come that this is not detectable?
Soooo.... To me these are the most frustrating sides of cheating in Ingress at the moment. And to be honest, I don't see so much effort to contain it, especially when spoofing is blatant.
In my region there are now more fake players than legit ones. Getting them banned has become even more difficult. The niantic support does nothing and the anticheat systems are ridiculous. I wonder how courageously Niantic sells core subscriptions with the game in this state, I hear players complain every day and more and more people decide to quit.
Calculate everytime the time between action on 2 different portal. If the speed is more than 130km/h, block the account. if people has used a plane for internationnal journey or big national fly, they will prove it.
This will **** a lot of the spoofing because they will need to wait a lot more in between action. Really easy to do.
@fxc Well, reporting on Ingress support is totally pointless. I have never heard of actions taken after a ticket was opened on niantic support, have you?
In Milan, the opposite faction doen't agree on the existance of a portal which my faction normally uses, so as soon as it is linked they command it to be spoofed. It's normal and fair to them, because we are not supposed to play on hard to reach portals. On top of that, whilst we try to put strategies, they play "Ingress with a kick": their inventories are unlimited as they use their families' accounts, including freaking kids (I swear... There is a guy who is dragging his child son around making him playing Ingress when there is a full chapter on TOS about the age children are allowed to play), they manage to control the scanner drift somehow to get to portals when they are not accessible, and on top of that, they also bother us personally: they desperately seek attention by any means, including cheating and insulting. They're probably suffering of loliness i donno, but I didn't start Ingress for being a counselor. And banning spoofers has no use, main accounts should be banned... But it's a lost cause, if you are so desperate to feel the need of cheating on a game to feel happy, there's nothing to stop you. These people are mental and childish, pure punishment won't do anything.
Oh and I forgot to mention the ancillary same faction accounts that pop up out of nowhere and x link around when fields are down... I mean, it's another game, they play a different Ingress which requires zero effort...
Comments
That's the type I'm asking about. Most of the time the multi-accounting beyond backpacks tends to be account sharing, with one person using their family members accounts etc, but they don't seem to be heavily used in a way Niantic could identify easily. The "10 accounts one person, all L8+" seems to be rarer, unless they're actually spoofing.
I would like to draw attention to the action of account @Niasection14 they have been moving around the UK with near lightening speed.
I don't know how this can't be detected by whatever is in place to detect these things as it really obvious to the locals. 🙂
/s 😂
You all are aware the game is not just niantic right?
Download Lightship For developers.
Reverse engineer.
Find problem.
Actually, it's quite likely that the element you'd need is the service Niantic is paid for. It's not a completely open platform.
For days we have been reporting a group of players who use fake GPS and break our main portals. The niantic "support" keeps closing tickets without doing anything! I wonder if the tickets are really read by someone or just closed automatically. I spend more time reporting than playing, improve support, otherwise only bots and fake accounts will remain playing
I opened a ticket 10 days ago ... no answer
If this thread is about spoofing, you might want to check the map, specifically in Russia (where I thought playing is restricted at the moment)... There's quite fresh player account fielding 11million MU fields from Finland to Moscow to Ukraine to Kazakhstan 😉
Keep you informed: Niantic support again does nothing.
Ticket 17570083 was CaReFuLlY ReViEwEd and action 🤡 take 🤡 when 🤡 appropriate (no).
Agent lvl2 makes field over blocked country -- and this is legitimate game, lol.
Then why didn't you do some "reverse engineering" and fix the problem by yourself when you wrote that post
27OP, that was fun!
Big thanks to ZTOMKTL!
Hrm, spoofer detection doesn't seem improved yet.
No, it looks boring and childish :)))
Better draw a huge organ over the Niantic office :)
I just started playing. I LITERALLY never would fathom humans puting forth the extream effort to spoof. As I'm playing more. I'm learning there is alot of toxic crazy stuff.
Lightship is what I assumed is the framework.
Clearly wildly underestimated the amount of people who spoof and cheat. Thabk you for the warm welcome.
Never saw in other games anyone asking other players to "do some reverse engineering and fix the problems by yourselves" instead of the company's doing their jobs. To do what you said, players have to hack into the production system that is Niantic's server first, which leads to jail.
Last time I checked niantic rather keep spoofs and cheats when they are paid subscribers. Support is bad in general and this also adds no value, as names and claims will get redacted.
Another waste of effort, to not solve any issues, is what I read here.
It is with great pleasure that I state some days ago spoofer was banned from the first report.
Let's see how it will be this time.
Whether or not a player pays subscription does not influence the decision to ban or not to ban. We have seen plenty of subscribed accounts being banned. It is not taken into account when investigating a report.
In Utah we have widespread and constant spoofing of strategic and remote portals in addition to urban ones. The spoof accounts and their collaborators troll and dox and players when we call them out in COMMs. In addition Niantic chat bans us for calling out their spoofing. We submit many spoof reports and frequently include pictures and videos. Most reports receive the standard form reply and nothing happens. Many people have quit playing because of this. It severely affects the game.
Is Niantic actively doing anything to address the problem?
Does Niantic have plans to do more?
Is there any channel for collaborating/sharing ideas with Niantic on how to address the problem? I have a number of ideas I'd be happy to share.
100% this. The activity in the SLC area is adversely affecting players on both sides, and the COMMs are clogged with he-said / she-said accusations, denials, and downright anger. We have had some luck with getting the Trolls reported for inappropriate Agent Names, but the spoofing seems to be untouchable.
A few months ago we had a group of spoofers that was banned fairly rapidly, but this set is bulletproof for some unknown reason. I was hoping the "new" continuous detection that was announced for PoGo was going to help here. No luck yet...
Note that "Calling them out on COMM" is well defined as harassment, and the old "Two wrongs does not make a right" thing applies. The trick is to call them out in non-Niantic spheres. The only thing Niantic looks at COMM for is harassment, so they're not reading your text unless notified, and all it does is give the spoofers something to report.
Another old adage: If you don't have anything nice to say... stay off COMM or they'll bait you into getting banned.
Escalate to vanguards spoof hits, stay off COMM. Hopefully the new CAL system will kick in and help.
I feel you so much...
Well, it's nice to see I'm not alone at the party! I have never imagined that people coul be so creative for cheating in games, especially multiplayer games (let's be honest, is there any multiplayer game which is not completely devastated by cheaters?). However, I am probably superficial and ignorant, but sometimes I find NIA pretty naïve: I mean, I filed dozens of reports against spoofers and happily had most of them banned, but my God, it is a full time job! The reports must contain specific information, a Vanguard must be involved (nope, don't tell me that someone reads our ingame reports, I don't believe it: the only reports taken in consideration are those from the Vanguards, reporting ingame is completely pointless... Or has anyone here ever had a spoofer banned thanks to one of those?). Then, you must wait for the ban to happen (IF it happens) and then collect all the links to the portals you need to be restored... Meanwhile, your same faction and the opposite faction have already xlinked everywhere and a new fake account is ready to go. I mean... Is it really necessary, to file everything manually? I saw spoofers playing, most of the time they travel super fast: how come that they are not automatically banned? And why, after they've been banned, why a Vanguard has to file all the portals for resets MANUALLY? It's just a waste of time to me and I believe it could be automated. If a portal has been spoofed, of course I want it to be restored, why do I need to even send a request?
Then, I don't understand if wintrading and multi-accounting is considered cheating or not. I guess it's hard to detect when a player is using their family members selfphones as mule accounts, but let's be honest.... Most of the time it's not them playing, it's the player who switches to different accounts on the same device or uses different devices: I guess this could be easily detected too, considering that we agree to share our data as well. Wintrading I guess has become the norm now, considered the number of xfac messages on the comm saying "please don't destroy this portal", "would you mind to help me for pokéstop", "let's arrange to level up/do x event" etc... And on a larger scale, I have encountered more and more agents from my very same faction who blatantly play against, especially during main events. Imagine you've just come back home, after building up a field and you receive a notification saying that an agent from your same faction has killed the field: you contact them and what they say is that "I am not crazy like you, I just want to get the medal but without going out and play, I want to play from my hp and your field has been up long enough". I mean, using the same colour advantage to play against, shouldn't be considered cheating as well?
Finally, what I am so sick of, are those cheating-ish situations, where magically the GPS signal drifts away soooo conveniently... I struggle to find safe portals for my fields, but there are players that according to their time travel are able to pass through fences and walls. I swear, I found myself in front of closed public parks at night, with the portal right in the middle: you may phisically reach it by jumping over the fence of course, but it takes time. These players, they manage to reach the portals in no time. Since are specific players who are able to do so, I am quite convinced that there are ways to slightly temper the GPS signal... And no, I am not talking of "oh my phone, if you turn off the gps and back on it drifts so much"... I mean steady placing yourself on the portal and attacking it for a while. How come that this is not detectable?
Soooo.... To me these are the most frustrating sides of cheating in Ingress at the moment. And to be honest, I don't see so much effort to contain it, especially when spoofing is blatant.
Man I got OT so much
In my region there are now more fake players than legit ones. Getting them banned has become even more difficult. The niantic support does nothing and the anticheat systems are ridiculous. I wonder how courageously Niantic sells core subscriptions with the game in this state, I hear players complain every day and more and more people decide to quit.
Some stuff easy to do.
Calculate everytime the time between action on 2 different portal. If the speed is more than 130km/h, block the account. if people has used a plane for internationnal journey or big national fly, they will prove it.
This will **** a lot of the spoofing because they will need to wait a lot more in between action. Really easy to do.
This will cause too many problems for legit agents traveling via train and plane. You can't just presume everyone guilty until proven innocent.
Another 4 tickets for gps spoofing were closed without ban. We have been reporting the same accounts for months, we are no longer able to play ingress
@fxc Well, reporting on Ingress support is totally pointless. I have never heard of actions taken after a ticket was opened on niantic support, have you?
In Milan, the opposite faction doen't agree on the existance of a portal which my faction normally uses, so as soon as it is linked they command it to be spoofed. It's normal and fair to them, because we are not supposed to play on hard to reach portals. On top of that, whilst we try to put strategies, they play "Ingress with a kick": their inventories are unlimited as they use their families' accounts, including freaking kids (I swear... There is a guy who is dragging his child son around making him playing Ingress when there is a full chapter on TOS about the age children are allowed to play), they manage to control the scanner drift somehow to get to portals when they are not accessible, and on top of that, they also bother us personally: they desperately seek attention by any means, including cheating and insulting. They're probably suffering of loliness i donno, but I didn't start Ingress for being a counselor. And banning spoofers has no use, main accounts should be banned... But it's a lost cause, if you are so desperate to feel the need of cheating on a game to feel happy, there's nothing to stop you. These people are mental and childish, pure punishment won't do anything.
Oh and I forgot to mention the ancillary same faction accounts that pop up out of nowhere and x link around when fields are down... I mean, it's another game, they play a different Ingress which requires zero effort...