Recent wave of bans - too many false positives, or legitimate actions by Niantic?

We found 4 ENL accounts in our area banned. All new agents. I don't really know them at all, and obviously they would not be reporting their problems to our community, but we have no significant reports of problems with their play, and are not aware of anyone who from our side who reported them for anything. From some second hand info relayed to me, at least one of the agents is completely unaware of what actions they may have done which violated the four broad categories from the email they received:

  • Unofficial software
  • Location falsification
  • Selling accounts
  • Multiple accounts

So are are these ban actions by NIA to be considered reliable? So if the players claim they are innocent, are we to assume they are lying when they claim they don't know why they got the ban? If these players actually want to keep playing and start new accounts that we know about, are we supposed to report them and keep them out of Ingress forever? Or if they are unreliable, should we be accepting these players back into the game?

I know that if it happened on the RES side, we would typically have more insight into their integrity, play and location and meetup activities IRL and we would likely support them if there is no reason to believe their play is suspicious.

I understand for various reasons Niantic does not comment on specific cases, but has there been any official statement from Niantic on this general wave of bans and whether there are potential problems with it?

Comments

  • Why should we suspect Niantic has erred here?

  • There seem to have been quite a few deletions of inactive agents, I know of several friends who haven't played in a long while that had their accounts terminated. They never did anything questionable, but they also didn't care too much as they had lost interest in playing.

  • @ZombieJughead

    That would be inaccurate, i havent played in like 6 months, and my account didnt get deleted, but @Lukidus was playing, and the evening he got banned, so that wouldnt be correct

  • @ZombieJughead

    They stopped to play and keep on sharing keys and others stuffs?

  • @TGCFabian1 Pretty much yeah. Was helping a visitor of the town set up a farming portal for his stay, and one to two hours later I got the ban mail.

  • There were a couple players recently banned here (Alberta, Canada), one res and one enl (totally separate people!) who don't seem to deserve getting banned, except that they weren't the most active players. Its frustrating!!

  • Thanks for reply but two agent no stock item, no stock vr, casual player no share account, no multi account no spoof no drift , one is alive and one is ban, support respond and confirm ban, is strange.

    I view account in farm never play never pop, only up the farm with R8 and this account is alive.

  • I was wondering.... wasn't there such a thing as the 3 strikes you're out method? As far as I heard none from the banwave got this warning.

  • @kenbeimer the 3 strikes system.isnt in use yet.

    And even if it was, there are TOS violations that result in an immediate ban regardless of previous warnings

  • Does this violating include the use of IITC? I know of at least one banned player that i just don't believe cheats.

  • The upcoming policy changes forum post was meant to inform people that this will be coming in a future version of Prime. It hasn't shipped yet, but it's coming soon and we'll update the forum when it does go live. That said, depending on the specific TOS violation, there are scenarios where we'll take action to try and preserve fair gameplay and the integrity of the game.

  • I am looking for the "next week announcement". Is it out yet? I wasn't banned myself but 75% of the Guam Resistance was which led to a several other res not playing. There was only one ENL ban and he seems to be confused as well.

  • DrThodDrThod ✭✭✭

    @Dirtyjoe619 the announcement was item sellers and more importantly buyers got banned.

    Do I think 75% of one faction in your region did buy items - unlikely. But if just one player started it and was ‘generous’ in hand-outs then a small group that shares everything can be nearly wiped out.

    it also tends to spread by example. That is likely the reason that in some areas lots of player are affected while I’m still waiting to hear for anyone in my area to be banned.

  • MorganzaMorganza ✭✭✭✭✭

    If your appeal via the official process is denied, if you are well-connected you may be able to get your account reinstated through back channels.

    This seems terribly arbitrary and unfair to more casual players, but I have multiple reliable reports that this is the way it works.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    " are we supposed to report them and keep them out of Ingress forever? "


    I really hope no community is doing such thing.

  • Two agent in my community is banned for unknown reason, any can help?

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