Why does Niantic support system autocloses reports of obvious spoofs and does not act?
Case #1
On the 11th of October 2019 spoof account “MoratusSacas” spoofed the remote island portal “Fair Isle Map” at 2:13am CET leaving the portal grey afterwards. Short summary of this portal is that spoof accounts have been busy killing this portals for more than a dozen times already read my fore last post on this forum.
Last year Niantic made great steps by restoring links and fields both of Resistance and Enlightened to stop spoofers gaining any advantage over legit agents. After prime only even a small victory by cheater tools with the scanner got exposed and put down. Unfortunately there are still ways to spoof in prime shown below. The auto-closing of tickets to support makes the anti-spoofing war even harder and more time consuming and energy is wasted due to factions taking advantage of actions of spoofers sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose.
At 2:13am CET Agent MoratusSacas killed the portal on fair isle, within 3 hours traveled to Norway to **** portals in a remote area at 5:08am CET traveling time for 671km within 3 hours is 230km/h at night at very remote locations.
The day after at 1:39am CET a very remote portal in Sweden was taken by the same agent, and again on the 20th late at night 10:52pm.
Account plays in Brazil and remote portals in Sweden but after multiple support tickets closed, opened, closed by both factions we would like to see some action of Niantic!
Case #2
22th october 2019 in the afternoon a blue spoofer “ksleon” killed the portal orfordness lighthouse in the middle of the (then at that time and day closed) former bomb test range of the Ministry of Defence. After this account traveled north to **** multiple green multilayers and spotted farming in Singapore the day after. This account was already spotted and reported days before due to travel times not adding up, and only killing the anchors of big fields in those actions.
Case #3
28th of october 2019 a green spoofer “WessSuu90” got active and first went to some islands and just got with amazing speed to island (3 minutes) and from the island to next portal off island (8 minutes) after that the account went over the water from The Netherlands to Belgium within 15 minutes then spam-linked to the UK after a visit of ENL agents to the UK and visited the location in Orford later that afternoon, again reports were sent but all came back without spoofer banned.
Case #4
29th of october a blue spoofer “mixa122133” popped up on the noordpier and killed noordpier and 7 min later zuidpier, both places with resos right on portal. Again all reports autoclosed. Then after this it just went and killed a lake portal without any problem and then traveled to the shetland isles in Scotland in 4 hours to **** an Green anchor with loads of fields connected to it.
All the cases above have obvious spoofer accounts active, and all reports were autoclosed without a banned spoofer this brings loads of anger to legit players and will take loads of pleasure away from playing this game.
We are asking if Niantic cannot see the obvious spoofs after reports from both factions and doesn’t trust their agents when reporting what can we do about this cheating? Now It feels that we are not playing Enlightened against Resistance (as the game should be) but more Enlightened together with Resistance fighting against spoofers and Niantic.
Comments
A few things to keep in mind when submitting tickets:
1: Niantic will never directly say what they did. It's not going to happen. They're terrified of any of that information being used to further cheat. Stupid? Yes. But it's the way it works.
2: All you know that they've done is closed the ticket. They have a support system in the background that the information from the ticket may have been attached to an open, existing issue.
3: Just because the account isn't instabanned, does not mean Niantic is doing nothing. It may be an on-going investigation to see what other accounts the bad-actors are interacting with, trying to determine what new methods they're using to cheat, etc.
4: Niantic can see a hell of a lot more of the games data than we can (legitimately, anyways). In the cases you've shared, I doubt this to be the case, but it may look like legit gameplay, and Niantic has nothing else to do.
Just file your reports, and move on. It's literally all you can do.
#niagamemaster please do your job and let us play against eachother instead of playing against spoofers.
Absolutely agree. Three of four my last BAFs were spoofed. None of spoofers is banned even when it was no doubt in spoofing and were reported by both factions
It's really disappoint me as orga
At least they could start by taking out the obvious ones and investigating the links between that account and other more legitimate looking accounts
I agree. The auto-closing of tickets when the movement is impossible is extremely frustrating.
It appears that Niantic assumes that everyone has a personal jetpack then auto-closes the report.
We had a local spoofer that both factions reported early on. We could tell it was a spoof due to the local movement-travelling at highway speeds down a bike path, wrong way down one way streets, hopping fences etc... We reported it with Google maps travel times and screenshots and detailed explanations. All reports closed. Finally the spoofer started travelling faster than the speed of sound and was banned, but not before they snagged a strategic island portal and broke links.
The portal and links were eventually reverted ( thanks Niantic for that improvement in spoofing response) but it was still a hassle to respect the non-existent links and not cross the spoofed lanes while we waited for that to happen.
It would be really nice if multiple reports from both factions from agents who know the area were given weight in the ticketing system.
Niantic knows, but I don't think they care.
Do you think they (NIA) actually going to change, I think it shows that the trusted reporter system was really the only way spoofing was delt with.
Most frustrating since I began playing Ingress. Auto closures of reports gives so much negative energy. Obvious spoof accounts are not banned, and the only reply you get is a standard message. Another thing is all the time used to make reports can’t be used to enjoy playing Ingress....and the joy is getting less and less. Hard work by agents to capture Pita portals is being destroyed by spoofers in seconds. This is not the way Niantic wants us to play, fair and having fun. Please Niantic, get into action against these bad actors in Ingress.
It's very toxic to report other agents 😒 Let's be friends together!
ps: it is very, very difficult to get a ban from an obvious spoofer. It seems that all our reports with photos, tracks and logs haven't not read at all
MoratusSacas is just the last of a long line of spoofers taking down a strategic portal in NE Brazil. I think this year alone there have been at least 6 accs banned for spoofing to that specific portal everytime we used it.
The diference is that Moratus is the first "prime only era" to go there and he got reported and nothing happened.
The way it looks is that things are going to get a lot worse before (hopefully) they get better....although there are no excuses not to ban these blatant cases.
Andrew just said in last AMA that Niantic cares about ingress....well, they should pay more attention to things that can easily break the game.....if Ingress goes into Pokemon Go spoofing levels all is lost.
Australian and New Zealand agents from both factions have been trying to get the spoofers that took out McMurdo banned for months, to no avail; and that is considering the accounts turned up there in during austral winter when there are no transports in to or out of the station, neither by sea nor by air, because, you know, winter in Antarctica is harsh, yeah? These accounts apparently have great travel agents though, as they turn up a few days later in South America, like they just popped down to McMurdo for a weekend getaway.
New TR system soon™? It had better get here before those of us who are actually still playing give up and join the Redacted retirees. Unless Niantic actually are intentionally alienating their player base, in which case good job, it's working better than anything they've ever set out to achieve.
All I can say is that, since the loss of the TR program, EVERY single one of my cheat-report tickets have been auto-closed without any evidence of human intervention whatsoever. In fact, to illustrate this, I re-submitted the same ticket for one particular spoofer ELEVEN consecutive times - once by one following receipt of each form letter. Every time, I got the same form letter back stating "appropriate action" was taken. Had a human been reviewing, I'm positive someone should have seen the string of duplicate submissions and noted/asked why I kept sending them on the letter. But Remy kept happily pumping out the same automated response every single time. NIA is so hands-off with communicating with their players seeking support anymore that things like replacing TR's with Remy demonstrate the exact essence of why players are angry and leaving. It's not a Prime thing. It's a "we don't care" thing.
Fully agreed on this. Same is happening in the north where several spoofers have taken out temporarily inaccessible islands, zero cell portals in amazing speeds and times.
We have a good Xfac taskforce in Australia and New Zealand where we've been battling spoofers, respecting lanes that were damaged by spoofers, and trying to restore gameplay.
Now the xfac reports on spoofers in Antartica, Pacific islands like Norfolk and Lord Howe, and Northern Territories and WA are automatically closed by Niantic. No word, no ban, no nothing. Spoofers are still live and we are unable to get resets of portals and links because the obvious cheaters won't get banned.
Thank you @roarex for addressing this again. It's maddening and frankly very disheartening to keep going.
What's maddening is the apparent apathy. Yes, they may be doing something behind the scenes, and yes they might suddenly roll out a comprehensive banwave. But by then, it might be to late.
Niais dead.
We can supply all the evidence in the world and they won't do anything. I've shown them evidence of someone traveling from NYC to India in under 5 hours. That means the agent had to be traveling 1400mph 😂. It's sad how they handle our reports.
Agree. Reports on the last 4 months is proven to be not as effective as before. Recenlty with enough proof it's not enough to make bad actors get banned. Are Ingress will be like Pokemon Go where Niantic let them to cheat, so there will be more players to play the game?
the game itself is already dying and now niantic is putting the last nail on Ingress coffin. RIP Redacted and soon RIP Ingress
The only way to conclusively prove a spoof from an agent's perspective is if someone takes a photo of the act happening. Sadly, that is prohibited in the ToS.
Thus agent side there is no way to prove it. Screenshots be damned because they're a digital form of hearsay.
So the report is autoclosed because nothing you say matters.
Whether I support that way of doing itnis moot; that for me is the reason why.
I work in tech (infrastructure and devops mainly). If we have a breach (well attempted breach ... Ahem!) we will examine historic data before making any changes to see the scale and scope of the attack. Sometimes 8t is just an over enthusiastic logger giving too much data and so dialling that back and the alarms are stable again. If it is a genuine attack, as long as it is not impacting services we will monitor and see how they got in, how they are bypassing security, etc. So Niantic are probably doing the same. They've got (I hope) anti spoof counter measures in play. If these are failing, they will be monitoring the behaviours and then model it and see if others are using the same techniques. As this is only a game and revenue isn't being impacted, I suspect they are building their lists of spoofers, checking it twice, and delivering the ban hammers in time for Christmas. Or maybe just changing the server side code to leave the account but to disallow the spoofing element .
The problem with your report is that you are using a third party add-on for those map-screenshots, which is against ToS. You should just use vanilla Intel and in-game screenshots for reporting.
Even photographic proof is not enough. We once lured the local spoofer to a portal where we knew he'd turn up (he was that predictable), we circled the location and took photos and videos while the portal was being captured. The reply was the standard one and the spoofer continued 🙄
Hi
We have report @ksleon , he play in Paris and it was identified for spoofing, many report but this account play again
In few week i have report many account for spoof evidence and any account wasn't ban
Portal inside à graveyard / park / garden closed at night.
+
capture by random account
=
Insta ban. No arguments accepted. But all the reports are auto-closed. I feel like wasting my time (like all you do). If the report system is down atm, niantic should announce it.
What do I hope niantic will never do? Deactivate all the portals inside graveyard, park and garden. These portals are PITA portals for great operations.
How should Nia verify that the area is really closed at night? Are they supposed to ban someone just because someone else says it is?
Some parks let you stay longer even after the entrance is closed. The area may be open even though there are opening times on the website. Opening times on the website may be wrong or change based on time of year. There may be special events at certain dates when you can enter even after regular closing times. There may be lucky drift. The responsible person may have forgotten to lock the gates. The player may be the responsible person and be there legally even after closure time. Some parks have bridges over them so that you can reach portals in the park even after closure.
All that's possible and even more. How do you expect Niantic to verify someone's claim that the other player must have spoofed from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away?
Xfac. If both teams agree that the player is spoofing (regardless of colour) then it should be weighted accordingly and take a lot more seriously... There are many areas that have well functioning xfac groups dedicated to asking the right questions of the wider playing group, as well as tracking movements etc and working out if it could be done in the timeframe etc... The players involved are usually those that have done the real journey and know what's involved in getting to many of these portals, when you can and can't access them etc. NIA just need to use the accumulated knowledge of these players as part of the solution
The biggest issue is that the real world implications of cheating (especially spoofing) can be profound, and are possibly unique to this game. Agents can and do spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get to some portals to claim then for their team in travel, accommodation costs etc getting to that location. To have that nullified by someone sitting at a keyboard really grates. If someone spoofs in pg or hpwu they benefit themselves, but the rest of the playing group don't have to stump up a bunch of time/money to go fiX. In this game we do, unless Nia agree and an clean the playing board. Given the premise of the game is to actually get out there and get walking, NIa need to do something about the bad actors that are also unfortunately part of our game.
Fair & balanced report @roarex . The current lack of action on reports about clear spoofers worldwide, and in this case the North sea, is an annoying situation and demotivating.
@RedSoloCup - It was highlighted during one of the AMA that there are periodic surveys from Ingress to better improve the quality service provided by NIA Ops. A straw poll from the agents (who are still active / semi active) that there are none provided for the past 6-12 months.
The current situation where NIA Ops (seemingly) is operating without any governance at all. There is no feedback channel where players can escalate on the outcome of the ticket closure.
There are just too many to count instances where bad actors are able to interrupt gameplay for long period despite multiple reports being submitted.
The assurance that NIA Ops enforces TOS and rules is (or has lost) losing credibility. Appreciate some feedback / announcements on NIA Ops to address the current situation and their poor reputation on the ability to maintain fair play.
I agree. The teams in our community do not agree on much. But when both sides agree on the spoofing being a spoof, that should be weighted. It shouldn't be the only factor, but it should be considered.
So some form of x-fac trusted reporting would be helpful to both teams and to Niantic and to the game overall. Even if it was the ability to file a report that multiple agents from both factions could sign on to.
This sort of verification happens informally within the communities already. I've been asked about the actions of an agent thousands of kilometers away because they had missions from my home town.