Let's do the math... Niantic says 8,000 accounts were banned and 99,6% of enforcement decisions have been upheld.
This means 0,4% of the bans were overturned. 0.4% of 8,000 is 32.
Considering I can name at least 4 players hit by the recent ban wave whose ban were overturned, just in the communities I'm in, and I've heard of several other cases, I find it hard to believe there were only about 30 bans overturned globally.
I literally spent all 3 hours of the Myriad anomaly using a mobile connection shared to me by a Niantic employee. I doubt he would do that if connection-sharing is a ban-worthy offense.
I am writing to tell the story of my wife, BelltrixMC. I am an active player. My wife, BelltrixMC, is very casual, but joins for events and other group activities. Because she is less active, she holds the quantum capsules with rare items for me and our community. She is a real player, with her own phone, managing gear like everyone else.
Hi, I wanted to clarify a question someone pinged me on Twitter. If I were given a capsule with 100 aegis shields by another player, and that player purchased those shields from an unauthorized seller who was identified in our investigation, then the other player's account(s) were banned and the 100 aegis shields that were in my inventory have been removed. I wouldn't have been banned because I accepted those aegis shields, but I don't get to keep those purchased items.
@Zhioon from what you've described (a player who is less active and holds multiple quantum capsules with rare items and transfers them to other players) is it possible that our team looking at raw data saw what looks like a mule account that may have been carrying and distributing items originally from unauthorized sources? Or did she hack these items on her own?
I am apparently one of the 0.4%. I was banned on the morning of Friday 2 August, appealed by midday, and was reinstated that night with a form message that boiled down to "we have determined that you have done nothing wrong, and we will ban you in a heartbeat if you ever do it again!"
I have not received or really given away much in the way of gear for months. No inventory was removed from my scanner when I was reinstated. I have only three things that make my play at all unusual:
I don't play as much in the everyday game since the birth of my child last October. I have attended three anomalies on the ground since then, though, and my inventory is usually optimized for anomaly play. This was exacerbated by the mountain of Very Rare gear I obtained from the Montréal Myriad restock portal.
I occasionally have my scanner open on the subway, which is fine and my location is accurate, but occasionally results in drifting to the end of the line. I do not take actions when this happens; speedlock prevents it anyway.
I have another player in my household. My spouse should be familiar to Niantic; she was ENL POC for Cassandra Prime Philadelphia. Her account was unaffected. Both of us are well-known in our own community and across a broader region.
Overall, given my own experience and what I've heard from others, I can only say that while I applaud Niantic for trying to do something about the rampant cheating that degrades the experience of everyday agents, NIA Ops does not have the connections to the community or the experience of gameplay to make these kinds of bans. Certainly not in the automated way that they are being done. I still can't tell you why I was reinstated, and other players who are family members of more active players were dismissed out of hand. Even the reinstatement process was completely opaque. I still don't know if my account is being subject to extra scrutiny, or if I am under community probation for the next 6 months. There has been no official communication and even trying to initiate further communication seems more likely to get me falsely banned again than to create positive change. How am I supposed to recruit new players to the game, if I can't vouch for Niantic's integrity in treating legitimate players fairly?
Maybe the turnover and expansion of the Vanguard program will help. But again given my own experience, the Vanguards are just as stymied as the rest of us in getting Niantic to listen to them. And more, and more connected, Vanguards, obviously still can't speak for players in communities they don't have contact with. I understand that there's a balance between having enough Vanguards to have coverage, and keeping the group small enough to be a working group, but that balance has clearly not been reached yet.
Thank you for the response @NianticBrian. She did not hack all the items herself. That is true. But she picked up capsules from me (her husband) and other agents in our small community. This is not against the TOS to hold gear for other players. She and I do not know anything about holding items from unauthorized sources. She also holds keys for traveling agents. Agents come from the US or Ecuador, for example, to Colombia. This is a convenient place to transfer keys. This is common for BAFs. Since she is a casual player, she has room to hold the keys. She picks them up and gives them to the next person. These are all normal game actions.
@theChandi to clarify, if Player X picked up items from an unknown Player Y, and Player Y obtained those items from an unauthorized source, seller, or bot, then Player Y would have been banned in this recent enforcement and Player X would have had the items removed from their inventory. Player X would not have been banned. Picking up random capsules isn't an issue, but if those items silently disappeared, this recent enforcement is why.
So after almost three weeks of being banned with no explanation, does this mean I was banned for suspected selling/buying of items? Apparently, fracking and passing gear along to people you play with regularly gets you banned. I don't see how this promotes collaboration and community with your team if you get banned because you trade gear?
Is everyone who came in contact with these items suddenly screwed? I know with 100% certainty I didn't pay for or buy items, but due to the nature of this game, how would anyone prove that? This whole fiasco is just further dissuading me from playing this game or any other Niantic game.
I still don't know if I'm suspected of selling/buying gear or someone dropped a capsule at a frack I happened to pick up? How do you know of or prevent accidental acquisition of these items? So my friend and I were banned because I could go to fracks an hour away, and he couldn't because he has a small child? Even though we played together at other times and have known each other for years before I started playing ingress?
One week ago my son ( After 3 years in game) was banner. Obviously He can't play alone or without me but we partecipated to a lot of flash farm or attak raids with a lot of others teammates and enemies
Finally One week ago during holiday in Greece After ee modded a portal for farm some K he was banned...
At same time in my community was banned the girlfriend of One of our Pocs...unbeliveable
@XK150 I only assume that because this happened to me and a friend July 22 about 9 hrs apart. We spent weeks conferring with leaders in the community trying to figure out why we got banned, and could never figure out why. Neither of us spoof, multi account, use 3rd party apps to alter the game, or buy or sell accounts. He is the closest player to me geographically, but not the most common recipient of excess gear. I was off for the summer and spent most of it playing ingress, going to every frack I could and fairly often dispersing gear to other players in my area who couldn't go to them.
As a group, there are about 8 of us who were just PoGo players that started playing Ingress in May/June, and our main goal was to make the game competitive in our area. The area we live in had 0 active enl players and all lvl 8 res portals and fields covering entire cities for months at a time. Daily gear farming and sharing is a necessity for this area.
After Niantic's statement yesterday, this is the only thing I think could be the cause of the bans, even though neither he nor I have spent money on anything gear related in Ingress with the exception of Key lockers. Heck, I didn't even know people sold gear to each other until Niantic's post yesterday.
@NianticBrian is it obvious that you guys are wrecking communities and tarnishing players reputations, yet? Might as well just turn the servers off if you're going to treat your player base like this.
You mean it could be a coincidence? I would find it hard to believe too, since all four accounts were banned a week ago during the ban wave. Hard bans for well-known community members, without an obvious reason (suspected spoofing etc), is a rare occurrence. Per Ockham's razor, I rule out the possibility of these 4 bans independently happening on the same day as the ban wave and being subsequently overturned.
So either the ban wave included more than the item sellers/buyers part, either there's something weird with the numbers. Outliers usually indicate an error somewhere.
I don't really have a theory here, I'm just scratching my head Columbo-style, because, you know, there's something that bothers me...
I don't think that there is necessarily a direct link between what a player was doing at the time of a ban and the reason for which they were banned. It's more likely that Niantic analysed existing data using a new algorithm to detect people linked to buying and selling kit.
There are also people whose bans were overturned on appeal, so anyone who thinks they were banned unfairly should appeal if they haven't already done so
Thankyou for taking the time to respond to my concerns. I assume this means the accounts of the "unauthorized source" have also been banned along with Player Y's account.
Have Niantic considered altering the ban notification emails to state something along the lines of your account has been banned due to purchase of in game items, specifically
Item X from "Unauthorized Source Account" on date ##-##-##
Item Y from "Unauthorized Source Account" on date ##-##-##
and so on.
This level of transparency would signficiantly improve the community's conference in ban process and allow any one apealing the ban to provide any concrete evidence to dispute the ban.
On a personal note I suspect this will have a dampening effect on tradng gear with unknown sources. More than once a capsule or two of gear has been dropped for me by unknown agents when I am visiting a city. At this point I suspect it is more prudent not to pick them up.
Just recently 75% of the Resistance got banned on Guam. Considering how small of a community it is, I would even say it's game breaking especially since it was almost all of the most dedicated smurfs including the FS coordinator. There was one ENL ban and he was our Swag specialist. So Guam FS may now be dead, and they all said they are not starting over as their ban was unjust. I do not believe them to be cheaters but only they know. Either way it is sad as the community was just starting to grow and now we pretty much have to start over. It's to the point that the Enl are recruiting Resistance.
Hello @NianticBrian I have not received any response to my appeal, My wife @BelltrixMC did nothing against the rules, and if she received items purchased illegally, we never knew, all the objects she has are from our small community of few players in my city collected legally, is a real player with her own cell phone, Honest. Please review her case. Thank you very much.
@grendelwulf lol. She may not be aware of all the things "she" does. The way her account is used (as described above) I am not sure she should have an Ingress account.
@NianticBrian I am 17 and have no access to buy gear online or any such thing. My parents clamped down on me. I have been away since the first day of the ban when I appealed and just got back in data coverage. The only thing that could have happened if it was gear related was someone sharedcheater gear with me. An Enl friend was banned and we traded all the time- but he never plays any more- he got banned too. He cheated at POGO so maybe he had cheater gear he gave me?? He doesn't care if he plays any more but I like to go out with my dad and play a bit. I will appeal again- this is so wrong I was level 10, played for 4 years? We had a hike planned to set up new unique hard to reach portals. I was 3rd in one zone and 9th in my city I live so I am active- for a non driving person who has social anxiety and doesn't like to go out alone. Please let me have my account back. WU sucks and I am not wanting to play PoGo. I had keys from my vacations- and liked to play with my dad, our bonding time he called it. FREE SWZHedonist!!! NOT GUILTY!!!
Short sighted age comment @XK150 My daughter has NLD and did not travel alone until one year ago. Now she does occasionally. She is 19. But we have tons of fun together. Sometimes playing Ingress, other times playing PoGo.
Comments
Let's do the math... Niantic says 8,000 accounts were banned and 99,6% of enforcement decisions have been upheld.
This means 0,4% of the bans were overturned. 0.4% of 8,000 is 32.
Considering I can name at least 4 players hit by the recent ban wave whose ban were overturned, just in the communities I'm in, and I've heard of several other cases, I find it hard to believe there were only about 30 bans overturned globally.
Considering I can name at least 4 players hit by the recent ban wave whose ban were overturned,
They might have been banned for some other detection / reason than "item selling / buying", which might have been a bit more erroneous.
I literally spent all 3 hours of the Myriad anomaly using a mobile connection shared to me by a Niantic employee. I doubt he would do that if connection-sharing is a ban-worthy offense.
I am writing to tell the story of my wife, BelltrixMC. I am an active player. My wife, BelltrixMC, is very casual, but joins for events and other group activities. Because she is less active, she holds the quantum capsules with rare items for me and our community. She is a real player, with her own phone, managing gear like everyone else.
- She doesn't buy/sell items or accounts.
- She doesn't spoof.
- She doesn't multi-account.
- She doesn't use unapproved software.
- She is a real person managing her own account.
Her account was banned. Her appeal was rejected.
What else can I do to help my wife?
cc: @NianticBrian @RedSoloCup
hm might be the capsules she is holding niantic reacted probably... try appeal again.
Hi, I wanted to clarify a question someone pinged me on Twitter. If I were given a capsule with 100 aegis shields by another player, and that player purchased those shields from an unauthorized seller who was identified in our investigation, then the other player's account(s) were banned and the 100 aegis shields that were in my inventory have been removed. I wouldn't have been banned because I accepted those aegis shields, but I don't get to keep those purchased items.
We already tried to do that, but it doesn't work.I have no answer yet
@Zhioon from what you've described (a player who is less active and holds multiple quantum capsules with rare items and transfers them to other players) is it possible that our team looking at raw data saw what looks like a mule account that may have been carrying and distributing items originally from unauthorized sources? Or did she hack these items on her own?
I am apparently one of the 0.4%. I was banned on the morning of Friday 2 August, appealed by midday, and was reinstated that night with a form message that boiled down to "we have determined that you have done nothing wrong, and we will ban you in a heartbeat if you ever do it again!"
I have not received or really given away much in the way of gear for months. No inventory was removed from my scanner when I was reinstated. I have only three things that make my play at all unusual:
Overall, given my own experience and what I've heard from others, I can only say that while I applaud Niantic for trying to do something about the rampant cheating that degrades the experience of everyday agents, NIA Ops does not have the connections to the community or the experience of gameplay to make these kinds of bans. Certainly not in the automated way that they are being done. I still can't tell you why I was reinstated, and other players who are family members of more active players were dismissed out of hand. Even the reinstatement process was completely opaque. I still don't know if my account is being subject to extra scrutiny, or if I am under community probation for the next 6 months. There has been no official communication and even trying to initiate further communication seems more likely to get me falsely banned again than to create positive change. How am I supposed to recruit new players to the game, if I can't vouch for Niantic's integrity in treating legitimate players fairly?
Maybe the turnover and expansion of the Vanguard program will help. But again given my own experience, the Vanguards are just as stymied as the rest of us in getting Niantic to listen to them. And more, and more connected, Vanguards, obviously still can't speak for players in communities they don't have contact with. I understand that there's a balance between having enough Vanguards to have coverage, and keeping the group small enough to be a working group, but that balance has clearly not been reached yet.
Thank you for the response @NianticBrian. She did not hack all the items herself. That is true. But she picked up capsules from me (her husband) and other agents in our small community. This is not against the TOS to hold gear for other players. She and I do not know anything about holding items from unauthorized sources. She also holds keys for traveling agents. Agents come from the US or Ecuador, for example, to Colombia. This is a convenient place to transfer keys. This is common for BAFs. Since she is a casual player, she has room to hold the keys. She picks them up and gives them to the next person. These are all normal game actions.
The possibility exists that some of those items she picked up from random agents were obtained illegally.
Keeping them and/or distributing them might be what triggered it. Even though she might have never known they were not legit obtained.
@theChandi to clarify, if Player X picked up items from an unknown Player Y, and Player Y obtained those items from an unauthorized source, seller, or bot, then Player Y would have been banned in this recent enforcement and Player X would have had the items removed from their inventory. Player X would not have been banned. Picking up random capsules isn't an issue, but if those items silently disappeared, this recent enforcement is why.
So after almost three weeks of being banned with no explanation, does this mean I was banned for suspected selling/buying of items? Apparently, fracking and passing gear along to people you play with regularly gets you banned. I don't see how this promotes collaboration and community with your team if you get banned because you trade gear?
Is everyone who came in contact with these items suddenly screwed? I know with 100% certainty I didn't pay for or buy items, but due to the nature of this game, how would anyone prove that? This whole fiasco is just further dissuading me from playing this game or any other Niantic game.
I still don't know if I'm suspected of selling/buying gear or someone dropped a capsule at a frack I happened to pick up? How do you know of or prevent accidental acquisition of these items? So my friend and I were banned because I could go to fracks an hour away, and he couldn't because he has a small child? Even though we played together at other times and have known each other for years before I started playing ingress?
@NianticBrian
Hi, the reflexion is not good.
Player Y is bot and drop item to player X, player X use item and drop item to player Z, your system ban player X
Is not compatible with gameplay, player X don't Say if the item is leggit or not.
I hope that lets say u frack some items and want give them to a friend, that should be ok and not trigger anything ?
One week ago my son ( After 3 years in game) was banner. Obviously He can't play alone or without me but we partecipated to a lot of flash farm or attak raids with a lot of others teammates and enemies
Finally One week ago during holiday in Greece After ee modded a portal for farm some K he was banned...
At same time in my community was banned the girlfriend of One of our Pocs...unbeliveable
If he can't play alone, it sounds like he's not old enough to be playing Ingress at all. There are minimum age requirements.
No, it doesn't mean that, because you could have been banned for something else.
Jeez, everyone's acting like there's only one bannable offense now.
@XK150 I only assume that because this happened to me and a friend July 22 about 9 hrs apart. We spent weeks conferring with leaders in the community trying to figure out why we got banned, and could never figure out why. Neither of us spoof, multi account, use 3rd party apps to alter the game, or buy or sell accounts. He is the closest player to me geographically, but not the most common recipient of excess gear. I was off for the summer and spent most of it playing ingress, going to every frack I could and fairly often dispersing gear to other players in my area who couldn't go to them.
As a group, there are about 8 of us who were just PoGo players that started playing Ingress in May/June, and our main goal was to make the game competitive in our area. The area we live in had 0 active enl players and all lvl 8 res portals and fields covering entire cities for months at a time. Daily gear farming and sharing is a necessity for this area.
After Niantic's statement yesterday, this is the only thing I think could be the cause of the bans, even though neither he nor I have spent money on anything gear related in Ingress with the exception of Key lockers. Heck, I didn't even know people sold gear to each other until Niantic's post yesterday.
@NianticBrian is it obvious that you guys are wrecking communities and tarnishing players reputations, yet? Might as well just turn the servers off if you're going to treat your player base like this.
You mean it could be a coincidence? I would find it hard to believe too, since all four accounts were banned a week ago during the ban wave. Hard bans for well-known community members, without an obvious reason (suspected spoofing etc), is a rare occurrence. Per Ockham's razor, I rule out the possibility of these 4 bans independently happening on the same day as the ban wave and being subsequently overturned.
So either the ban wave included more than the item sellers/buyers part, either there's something weird with the numbers. Outliers usually indicate an error somewhere.
I don't really have a theory here, I'm just scratching my head Columbo-style, because, you know, there's something that bothers me...
I don't think that there is necessarily a direct link between what a player was doing at the time of a ban and the reason for which they were banned. It's more likely that Niantic analysed existing data using a new algorithm to detect people linked to buying and selling kit.
There are also people whose bans were overturned on appeal, so anyone who thinks they were banned unfairly should appeal if they haven't already done so
Thankyou for taking the time to respond to my concerns. I assume this means the accounts of the "unauthorized source" have also been banned along with Player Y's account.
Have Niantic considered altering the ban notification emails to state something along the lines of your account has been banned due to purchase of in game items, specifically
Item X from "Unauthorized Source Account" on date ##-##-##
Item Y from "Unauthorized Source Account" on date ##-##-##
and so on.
This level of transparency would signficiantly improve the community's conference in ban process and allow any one apealing the ban to provide any concrete evidence to dispute the ban.
On a personal note I suspect this will have a dampening effect on tradng gear with unknown sources. More than once a capsule or two of gear has been dropped for me by unknown agents when I am visiting a city. At this point I suspect it is more prudent not to pick them up.
Just recently 75% of the Resistance got banned on Guam. Considering how small of a community it is, I would even say it's game breaking especially since it was almost all of the most dedicated smurfs including the FS coordinator. There was one ENL ban and he was our Swag specialist. So Guam FS may now be dead, and they all said they are not starting over as their ban was unjust. I do not believe them to be cheaters but only they know. Either way it is sad as the community was just starting to grow and now we pretty much have to start over. It's to the point that the Enl are recruiting Resistance.
I haven't heard of any ban over my area.
I'm actually suprised xD
This is not the first banstorm Niantic does and honestly, there should be more.
Banstorms are good, they keep cheaters fears alive.
Hello @NianticBrian I have not received any response to my appeal, My wife @BelltrixMC did nothing against the rules, and if she received items purchased illegally, we never knew, all the objects she has are from our small community of few players in my city collected legally, is a real player with her own cell phone, Honest. Please review her case. Thank you very much.
She has an account here. She can sign in and plead for herself.
@grendelwulf lol. She may not be aware of all the things "she" does. The way her account is used (as described above) I am not sure she should have an Ingress account.
@NianticBrian I am 17 and have no access to buy gear online or any such thing. My parents clamped down on me. I have been away since the first day of the ban when I appealed and just got back in data coverage. The only thing that could have happened if it was gear related was someone sharedcheater gear with me. An Enl friend was banned and we traded all the time- but he never plays any more- he got banned too. He cheated at POGO so maybe he had cheater gear he gave me?? He doesn't care if he plays any more but I like to go out with my dad and play a bit. I will appeal again- this is so wrong I was level 10, played for 4 years? We had a hike planned to set up new unique hard to reach portals. I was 3rd in one zone and 9th in my city I live so I am active- for a non driving person who has social anxiety and doesn't like to go out alone. Please let me have my account back. WU sucks and I am not wanting to play PoGo. I had keys from my vacations- and liked to play with my dad, our bonding time he called it. FREE SWZHedonist!!! NOT GUILTY!!!
Short sighted age comment @XK150 My daughter has NLD and did not travel alone until one year ago. Now she does occasionally. She is 19. But we have tons of fun together. Sometimes playing Ingress, other times playing PoGo.