Yeah, I get the feeling that support is outsourced to someone who doesn't have any good tools, maybe they run some script on an account and get a red or green checkmark or whatever and ignore it if it doesn't trigger the "speed warning" too badly, but meanwhile any person with half a brain cell can see whats going on.
Cheaters have ruined so many games and ingress has become one of them, it's obvious that nia doesn't care about game integrity. They probably only care about "active accounts", number of portal scans and such. Meanwhile the only ones left playing here are people who just use ingress as a fidget spinner and cheaters. FS at home meant the community took a big hit, and with cheaters running rampant there's no interest in reviving it..
Even if someone is finally caught after ruining the game for the rest of us for half a year, they would only get first strike and can continue to play.. Or they just play one of their other spoof accounts..
2FLA is the only way to verify that players are where they say they are. As much as everyone hates it, a 15 second wayspot scan is currently the only mention Niantic as a business have actually implemented as a 2FLA method.
Same happens here, it's been a while since I got someone banned for spoofing and I've been reporting accounts that show up from nowhere to block us in the middle of building a multi-layer or 2 accounts from both factions that came to F with what I had built around my neighbourhood with the RES and blocked me with the ENL account in case I wanted to rebuild, no one was there phisycally attacking those portals cause I was returning home in my bike and I saw nobody.
Reports are getting closed all at the same time when you report more than one account. I strongly believe that all those that review our reports (Tura, Louise, Sofonisba and the others) are just bots that have not been functioning well lately, maybe something got F'd up and they stopped working properly cause the evidence is clear and no sanction has been made.
The other option is spoofing methods are just getting better and those supposed humans don't find anything wrong when checking the activity of those accounts.
From the reports here, I see that Nia doesn't care about the cheaters, unfortunately after the prime started, the spoofers make the party in the game. When I started in 2017, spoofers were banned immediately, I didn't even need to report it, today I've already made several reports of a player who has run 10000km this year and no banning, not to mention the other accounts he uses to level up portals. I've already given up on ingress, I don't even spend any more time running to play. One thing that should also be implemented, was a portal hack log, as there are people here in the state where I live who have infinite keys from a distant portal, and the portal only has shields, no farm mods, even so every week he turns the portal on the virus and redoes the fields, with at least 30 links.
I don't know why niantic doesn't care about spoofing, exactly bad actor.
- We founding a user having nearly infinite inventory, and he has admitted to having more 20 backpack account.
- A user with having infinite portal key from Anchor (1) more 60 KM from my hometown (Vital Objects Area) , anchor 2 more 120 KM from my hometown (is in a valley)
- A user who appears only occasionally, and whose goal is to destroy a certain or captured specific portal then the user disappear. Or an active user but can upgrade portal everywhere I've even found cross island ones (this lockdown situation).
- A user moving from one portal to another portal which is exactly The google map estimates. Not just once, but during the action all movement are exactly the same as Google map estimates.
- A new user with trekker badge, which is up to 2/3 times around the world
- A user having more 10x times translators, but He can't gylph level 8 portal. The last time i got someone. Farming just by holding 2 smartphone and didn't anything More 30 minutes, at location with usually farm. I was able to catch him for making a vidio call with my friend who doesn't play ingress. So i'm tried asking the nearest agent to come overover, and you guessed? it he freak out.
TBH at this point I'm not sure why we even care anymore. Either you just stop playing (which is exactly the goal those cheaters want) or you just accept that cheating is basically officially blessed way of playing right now.
I have people who run multiple accounts to fire XMPs on my couch portal every minute for 6+ hours straight. There are zero breaks in-between, no reaction from those bots and just keep firing at the same location even if the portal has gone neutral for 3-4 hours and they are only hitting portals at the edge for <1% damage.
This has been going on for months and I have literally sent them dozens of screenshots and videos and no action is ever taken. I've complained to various Nianatic staffs about the issue and their responses are either just cheater-apologetic or just completely brain-dead. Their "community manager" also just kept lying to me that all reports are handled by real person and just answers a bunch of non-sense whenever I press on why even most of the obvious cheating gets ignored for years. It really makes you wonder what the heck is wrong this company at all.
There are more accounts on ingress playing with gps spoofing than playing fair. Niantic Support will start banning people who play by the rules. They have also started replacing players who quit with red bots
I'm not even asking them to investigate those mild ToS violations like multi-accounting that are extremely hard to prove. I've pretty much given up on getting those banned especially when you consider Niantic pretty much is soft allowing multi-accounting in their other games. Simply go to any Pokemon Go events or groups, and you'll see loads of people openly playing with 2-3 phones at the same time. Do you ever see Niantic enforcing ToS even at their official events?
Back to the topic anyway, I've reported and seen so many obvious cases that would have raised serious suspicions by any agents who played this game for more than a few days, yet they go unpunished for months straight. Some examples:
Multiple accounts using automated programs to fire XMPs for hours with zero breaks. No reaction even if the portal in question has gone neutral for hours. That's apparently Niantic believes how real agents play: fire XMP every 2 minutes at practically nothing (just hitting shielded portals at edge for <1% damage). Okay, maybe in some exceptional cases one guy is actually crazy enough to do that for hours, but how do you explain 3-4 accounts coming here to do the same thing every day.
Agents who owns 8 accounts so that they can build P8 anywhere by logging into each account one-by-one... slowly. You literally just have to tap their alt's monthly stats to see that all they ever do is deploy resonators/mods. I guess the only explanation is that he magically managed to enslave 7 other people who must follow him across multiple cities religiously. He also managed to get all 7 of them super interested in Ingress to the point they can always fire up their account on-demand to deploy resonators, but not interested enough to actually play the game. Oh, and despite theoretically having 8 real people in the same spot, they are strictly forbidden to deploy at the same time and somehow must wait at least 2 minutes between deployment.
New accounts who level to L8 in a couple of hours and is never seen on the comm again. Suddenly coming back with Onyx glyph badges because new people like to play intensively for a few hours and then suddenly decide they will start glyphing 24/7 for the rest of their life and never interact with the game anymore. Same thing for those suspiciously new accounts with unusually high maverick/recharger/trekker stats. Niantic literally have information about the stats distribution across the entire playerbase; just find some interns to automate flagging those extreme outliers for manual review.
There is one agent in my city who kept getting harassed by a bunch of disposable accounts while he was trying to achieve 1billion AP. All of these accounts are named after his codename by flipping letters around or just changing 1 to I or l. There are also griefers who are dedicated to start new accounts based on other agents' real names or license plates. Niantic could have prevented it by brining the "verified medal" system back, but they would rather just allow players get doxxed and waste their time filing support tickets. The verification also plays a huge part in actually taming bad actors in this game. It is not a perfect mechanism but at least it can be a serious deterrent so that they can't just spin up a bunch of disposable accounts at will.
A year ago there was a period where my cell's top 3 scores were constantly occupied by random L3-L5 accounts, and that is in a cell with 30-40+ active agents on both sides. Somehow new accounts just keep popping up every week and always manage to out-field all of us. Why Niantic isn't automatically flagging new accounts whose first badge earned is platinum/onyx Illuminator is beyond me. Does anyone actually meet a legitimate new player whose first few actions in-game is making a few BAF and then just decide to retire?
Despite whatever lies they always seem to claim, it's really hard to make us believe that they are handled by real person when even the most obvious ToS violations like those above simply get ignored for months/years. Does the mythical "real person" behind even believe any of those are normal gameplay?
The truth is that I don't even recommend people to play Ingress anymore these days, and that's from someone who has been playing since Ingress launched in late 2012, organized many new player events and spent countless hours helping new agents get started. It's just not worth the effort and mental stress to risk getting constantly spoofed/doxxed and then fight a dysfunctional support system. It's supposed to be a game where you go out and meet friends, plan huge ops and actually have fun, but so far all I can see is that it has been reduced to a platform for griefers.
So that's it, for Ingress's 10-year anniversary. All I hope right now is that NIA will soon dial the Machina event up to 11 so those bad actors can see how pointless it is to spend so much effort cheating in this game. At this point fighting against emotional-less machines in PvE sounds more appealing to me than fighting spoofers 24/7.
Some reporting categories will indeed be handled carefully be real person but it's still difficult to get players who violated ToS permanently banned. "30 days passed and they show up again" is the often case.
However, some other reporting categories will be "handled by real person" by clicking "close the ticket" instantly. You've see the reply below my comment. It's still seen as "handled manually" by them. Whatever...
players who use gps spoofing or multi-account know they can do whatever they want, if one account is banned, they create two or three more. If Niantic is not able to implement new anti-cheat systems on ingress, the game is unfortunately destined to die
Even if all accounts are banned, the lunatics who immediately create new accounts to appear can only be beaten individually.
Still, there is usually the main account that the madman cherishes, so it is necessary to investigate and ban them.
And for this reason, too, it is better to have a system that allows GPS logging, like the Google Maps timeline, even in situations where the user is not logged into the game.
Usually, when they are strangers, even family members, the proximity time and signal strength by Bluetooth are used in the GPS logs and COVID-19 tracking application. More importantly, the communication time and volume will vary.
Two fake accounts in less than 24 hours in Milan area @NianticThia . Two accounts are still active, regardless the in game reports being "carefully reviewed". And for the record, their actions target specific players, this game is literally allowing cyber bullying...
Same here, called out a guy when he was spoofing as usual during his lunch break, then he created a new account on the other side the next day. Straight out of the box same pattern as every other spoof: Glyping, Fielding and spending 20-120 minutes between portals that are 50-100 meters apart, reported like 5 times (every time he moved after nia closed ticket) and have confirmed that it's him based on his RL actions (which i cannot use as proof because doxing)..
Nia just closes every time. I'm fairly certain Ingress doesn't have any anti-cheat crew now, but have just dumped the responsibilities onto Pokemon Go support which doesn't care about multi accounts and are used to the less transparent gameplay where cheaters more easily can pretend to be legit players in the community, thus they just dont bother to do anything.
Unfortunately for them, in Ingress players actually have the tools to see whats going on, and real players dont bother playing against bots.
There is no actual benefit of mentioning the community manager. She even does not come to the forum frequently. She won't get interested in helping the anti-spoofing.
Comments
Yeah, I get the feeling that support is outsourced to someone who doesn't have any good tools, maybe they run some script on an account and get a red or green checkmark or whatever and ignore it if it doesn't trigger the "speed warning" too badly, but meanwhile any person with half a brain cell can see whats going on.
Cheaters have ruined so many games and ingress has become one of them, it's obvious that nia doesn't care about game integrity. They probably only care about "active accounts", number of portal scans and such. Meanwhile the only ones left playing here are people who just use ingress as a fidget spinner and cheaters. FS at home meant the community took a big hit, and with cheaters running rampant there's no interest in reviving it..
Even if someone is finally caught after ruining the game for the rest of us for half a year, they would only get first strike and can continue to play.. Or they just play one of their other spoof accounts..
Yes. I've seen too many cases where blatant spoofers are not banned. Or "permanent banned" accounts are restored.
2FLA is the only way to verify that players are where they say they are. As much as everyone hates it, a 15 second wayspot scan is currently the only mention Niantic as a business have actually implemented as a 2FLA method.
The problem is how many devices cannot scan at all, this removing quite a large part of the playerbase.
That and the fact that you can very well scan your feet, if there is not enough scans to do some comparison…
Yeah asking someone to scan a VPS enabled portal would be absurd since they're few and far between.
Scans are no good, most of the hard anchors we use are low data and never been scanned.
Same happens here, it's been a while since I got someone banned for spoofing and I've been reporting accounts that show up from nowhere to block us in the middle of building a multi-layer or 2 accounts from both factions that came to F with what I had built around my neighbourhood with the RES and blocked me with the ENL account in case I wanted to rebuild, no one was there phisycally attacking those portals cause I was returning home in my bike and I saw nobody.
Reports are getting closed all at the same time when you report more than one account. I strongly believe that all those that review our reports (Tura, Louise, Sofonisba and the others) are just bots that have not been functioning well lately, maybe something got F'd up and they stopped working properly cause the evidence is clear and no sanction has been made.
The other option is spoofing methods are just getting better and those supposed humans don't find anything wrong when checking the activity of those accounts.
From the reports here, I see that Nia doesn't care about the cheaters, unfortunately after the prime started, the spoofers make the party in the game. When I started in 2017, spoofers were banned immediately, I didn't even need to report it, today I've already made several reports of a player who has run 10000km this year and no banning, not to mention the other accounts he uses to level up portals. I've already given up on ingress, I don't even spend any more time running to play. One thing that should also be implemented, was a portal hack log, as there are people here in the state where I live who have infinite keys from a distant portal, and the portal only has shields, no farm mods, even so every week he turns the portal on the virus and redoes the fields, with at least 30 links.
I don't know why niantic doesn't care about spoofing, exactly bad actor.
- We founding a user having nearly infinite inventory, and he has admitted to having more 20 backpack account.
- A user with having infinite portal key from Anchor (1) more 60 KM from my hometown (Vital Objects Area) , anchor 2 more 120 KM from my hometown (is in a valley)
- A user who appears only occasionally, and whose goal is to destroy a certain or captured specific portal then the user disappear. Or an active user but can upgrade portal everywhere I've even found cross island ones (this lockdown situation).
- A user moving from one portal to another portal which is exactly The google map estimates. Not just once, but during the action all movement are exactly the same as Google map estimates.
- A new user with trekker badge, which is up to 2/3 times around the world
- A user having more 10x times translators, but He can't gylph level 8 portal. The last time i got someone. Farming just by holding 2 smartphone and didn't anything More 30 minutes, at location with usually farm. I was able to catch him for making a vidio call with my friend who doesn't play ingress. So i'm tried asking the nearest agent to come overover, and you guessed? it he freak out.
How long do we have To comply with your ToS?
TBH at this point I'm not sure why we even care anymore. Either you just stop playing (which is exactly the goal those cheaters want) or you just accept that cheating is basically officially blessed way of playing right now.
I have people who run multiple accounts to fire XMPs on my couch portal every minute for 6+ hours straight. There are zero breaks in-between, no reaction from those bots and just keep firing at the same location even if the portal has gone neutral for 3-4 hours and they are only hitting portals at the edge for <1% damage.
This has been going on for months and I have literally sent them dozens of screenshots and videos and no action is ever taken. I've complained to various Nianatic staffs about the issue and their responses are either just cheater-apologetic or just completely brain-dead. Their "community manager" also just kept lying to me that all reports are handled by real person and just answers a bunch of non-sense whenever I press on why even most of the obvious cheating gets ignored for years. It really makes you wonder what the heck is wrong this company at all.
We've seen countless "all reports are handled by a real person" sayings on the forum by Vanguards or XMAs as well....
Reports of urban spoofs just won't.
Yes, they are.
When saying "all reports are handled by a real person", players are assuming that reports will be carefully reviewed.
When you said "Yes, they are"... "closing the ticket instantly within 1 minute" is indeed handled. Semantics, as always.
There are more accounts on ingress playing with gps spoofing than playing fair. Niantic Support will start banning people who play by the rules. They have also started replacing players who quit with red bots
I'm not even asking them to investigate those mild ToS violations like multi-accounting that are extremely hard to prove. I've pretty much given up on getting those banned especially when you consider Niantic pretty much is soft allowing multi-accounting in their other games. Simply go to any Pokemon Go events or groups, and you'll see loads of people openly playing with 2-3 phones at the same time. Do you ever see Niantic enforcing ToS even at their official events?
Back to the topic anyway, I've reported and seen so many obvious cases that would have raised serious suspicions by any agents who played this game for more than a few days, yet they go unpunished for months straight. Some examples:
Despite whatever lies they always seem to claim, it's really hard to make us believe that they are handled by real person when even the most obvious ToS violations like those above simply get ignored for months/years. Does the mythical "real person" behind even believe any of those are normal gameplay?
The truth is that I don't even recommend people to play Ingress anymore these days, and that's from someone who has been playing since Ingress launched in late 2012, organized many new player events and spent countless hours helping new agents get started. It's just not worth the effort and mental stress to risk getting constantly spoofed/doxxed and then fight a dysfunctional support system. It's supposed to be a game where you go out and meet friends, plan huge ops and actually have fun, but so far all I can see is that it has been reduced to a platform for griefers.
So that's it, for Ingress's 10-year anniversary. All I hope right now is that NIA will soon dial the Machina event up to 11 so those bad actors can see how pointless it is to spend so much effort cheating in this game. At this point fighting against emotional-less machines in PvE sounds more appealing to me than fighting spoofers 24/7.
[Citation Needed]
Well said.
Some reporting categories will indeed be handled carefully be real person but it's still difficult to get players who violated ToS permanently banned. "30 days passed and they show up again" is the often case.
However, some other reporting categories will be "handled by real person" by clicking "close the ticket" instantly. You've see the reply below my comment. It's still seen as "handled manually" by them. Whatever...
players who use gps spoofing or multi-account know they can do whatever they want, if one account is banned, they create two or three more. If Niantic is not able to implement new anti-cheat systems on ingress, the game is unfortunately destined to die
Even if all accounts are banned, the lunatics who immediately create new accounts to appear can only be beaten individually.
Still, there is usually the main account that the madman cherishes, so it is necessary to investigate and ban them.
And for this reason, too, it is better to have a system that allows GPS logging, like the Google Maps timeline, even in situations where the user is not logged into the game.
Usually, when they are strangers, even family members, the proximity time and signal strength by Bluetooth are used in the GPS logs and COVID-19 tracking application. More importantly, the communication time and volume will vary.
Haha the number of lvl to 8 in a day accounts then vanish is huge.
Again deep learning would fix this.
Two fake accounts in less than 24 hours in Milan area @NianticThia . Two accounts are still active, regardless the in game reports being "carefully reviewed". And for the record, their actions target specific players, this game is literally allowing cyber bullying...
Same here, called out a guy when he was spoofing as usual during his lunch break, then he created a new account on the other side the next day. Straight out of the box same pattern as every other spoof: Glyping, Fielding and spending 20-120 minutes between portals that are 50-100 meters apart, reported like 5 times (every time he moved after nia closed ticket) and have confirmed that it's him based on his RL actions (which i cannot use as proof because doxing)..
Nia just closes every time. I'm fairly certain Ingress doesn't have any anti-cheat crew now, but have just dumped the responsibilities onto Pokemon Go support which doesn't care about multi accounts and are used to the less transparent gameplay where cheaters more easily can pretend to be legit players in the community, thus they just dont bother to do anything.
Unfortunately for them, in Ingress players actually have the tools to see whats going on, and real players dont bother playing against bots.
There is no actual benefit of mentioning the community manager. She even does not come to the forum frequently. She won't get interested in helping the anti-spoofing.
Nobody will
Last Active November 23 ☹️
And last reply October 20 😴
so so far what is the result of this thread? 🤣
successfully making the general board of this community forum looking cleaner, which is what the community manager wants...
Niantic team POV: mute this channel. Oh no more spoofing issues, let’s all have beers.