Bring Back Verification “badge” (help stop multi-Acct’s)

id Like to start off by stating the facts of recent occurrence “issues”, “incidents”!

so the problem I ran into by a “random” agent looking to “Troll” me & whom I’m 99% positively sure it’s another agents, 1 of many “mule”, “bot” etc. Accounts. This issue occurs more often than NOT! It’s become quiet the annoyance to be, matter-of-fact, but reporting multiple accounts of a particular AGENT, who over the years has gained or more or less has become ill reputable for being known for making a plethora of these Accounts, Handles, Nics , whatever you wanna call it 🙄 which in-turn are used by this person, and his band of “Crewbies” which they then proceed to level up these generic “throw_away Acct’s to level 8-10 usually, and then proceed to use them to “Troll” those players who are easily intimidated or find a player with a self esteem that’s not exactly “sky-High” if you catch my drift…. Anyways to cut this long story short I just wanted to give a better understanding of the (how’s n why’s) that if Niantic/Ingress would bring back the Verified Badge or at the very least, ADD certain aspects to it that would require a Player to be verified by a reputable source that’s not apart of any of these said “Groups” of Antagonistic individuals that get away with these mass multi account creations by which they then implement the new account for use in “Spoofing Clients” , “Charging Bots”, “Mass 8-Farms”, just to name a few of the uses that I’ve seen implemented by these insecure individuals who seem to be co-dependent upon one another to gain “Whatever” In-Game Fame, or Notoriety.

I see the possibilities that if Niantic/Ingress along with the Communities Aid by giving feedback, and anyone can put their “2 Cents in” , and contribute ideas 💡 to help put a stop to the CHEATERS !! The spoofers, along with the Multi Accounting,… So by Bringing back a Verification Method, wether it be a badge or not would still help in resolving the issues at hand that many people (some who explicitly come out and say ,YOUR SPOOFING!! Then those who prefer to only call it “Circumstantial until Proven with hard evidence, even when that evidence is a Screen Recoding w/ Cam recordings of the vicinity showing that the person “Spoofing” is no where in the radius of a level 8 XMP or they have some sorta Invisibility cloaking Technologies that we are yet a prized of !! Lol j/k but some people really need to “SEE TO BELIEVE” no matter how concrete the evidence is! The Fact of what I’ve brought up is that I really don’t care about the “Badge” per say, it would be a Bonus, but a better implemented Verification method that wouldn’t be to difficult to attain, and would actually be somewhat of an achievement I guess you could say towards playing Ingress could make it some what fun if not sorta challenging, BUT ALSO WEEDING OUT THE REAL FROM THE FAKE ! ! !

Anyone feel like this could be an option, or NOT, PLEASE Speak up. Give your Opinion, & or Constructive Criticism in a helpful, and great full way as always, progressive thinking is always a [+]

TY _- j ☠️

Comments

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    I agree, we need a verification for all new accounts and even existing.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you guys have suggestions for a verification method that could prove accurate and is accessible globally, please write them here.

  • NysyrNysyr ✭✭✭✭

    Associating your Ingress account to a phone number would be a good start.

  • HosetteHosette ✭✭✭✭✭

    Everybody must hunt down John Hanke and post a selfie with him to get verified? (-:

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    We did that before with the Verified badge. Phone numbers are easy to spoof. SMS verification is not great compared to 2FA.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    what about tie the ingress account to a phones IMEI number, would that be possible ?

  • InvestigateXMInvestigateXM ✭✭✭✭✭

    That's also not practical, as a): Apps that are running Android 10 and above cannot read the IMEI (except in special circumstances, which Ingress is not part of) and b): Spoofers and Multiaccounters could easily change the data that would be submitted to Ingress anyway.

    If Niantic wants to bring back verification, it needs to use something that's "off the phone", like Credit Card verification, if every single player had access to one.

  • ToxoplasmollyToxoplasmolly ✭✭✭✭✭

    What exactly is "verification" supposed to do or be for?

    ===

    Is verification to prove that there's a real human behind each Agent account? The answer is trivially and always "yes." We don't have AIs run amok in the network (sorry, ADA; sorry, Skynet). For any given Agent account, some real person out there cares that it exists.

    The only question is how much of a burden you want to put on them to speak up. Anything acceptable to one person playing one account is likely to be acceptable to one person playing several accounts. Maybe you can dissuade bot masters, though.

    ===

    Is verification to limit one person to one Agent account? Then you need something that [1] uniquely identifies each and every person on the planet (so that you can tell people apart) and [2] that cannot be shared or given to other people (so that you cannot impersonate someone else) and [3] that someone cannot have more than one of (so that one person cannot pretend to be many).

    My gut says that's a pretty tall order.

  • You’re Hilarious 😆 😂 🤣!!! That made me LOL! 👍🏻

  • 3car3car ✭✭✭

    Forgive me for not reading the whole discussion thoroughly, I'm merely adding my opinions on this matter.

    I do agree that some sort of verification is indeed needed. But yet again, some places in the world using more than one SIMs/phones are common. I myself already use two phones with different numbers+eSIMs for personal/work privacy separation. This already is a potential 2(or more) verified accounts if we are going to use SMS verification, or anything tied to a phone number.

    Then again, what else do we have? Personal ID? Passports? As mentioned above, there is no identification that is free(or less cost to Niantic), available worldwide, has access to any ages(as I remember the ToS mentions age restrictions of 13~15), and can verify that the method identifies that two accounts are not used by a single person at the same time.

    I really hate multi accounts. I have to deal with 4 shields every time, I saw multi accounts with my bare eyes, I also saw multi accounts submitting selfies under the same name. They don't get banned, and they jeer a lot. Yet, for many restrictions, laws or ToS, it is near impossible to prove it to someone else. So some different approach is probably in use. Some systemic detection. It sure won't do well up to our expectations, but seems the only way right now.

  • jjavierjjavier ✭✭✭

    Good question!

    As i think its impossible to stop gps fake, at least there is a probablity to decrease multi-accounts.

    Verified badge, linking ingress account with a phone number. If at the check time a server calls that number and ingress application can validate the missed call with that account, we'll have the device validated as a real phone and unique for ingress. Any other app instalation will reset that badge and requires phone validation again. When Niantic suspects of someone can ask someone to verify his account in 1 o 2 days, for example.

    I don't know if this solution is technically possible.

  • MoogModularMoogModular ✭✭✭✭✭

    Nothing should be tied to IMEI as that goes beyond the reach of phone providers. Also, I know Niantic doesn't have the tech support for any issues at that level.

    The only thing I can see Niantic doing at that level is maybe Niantic social ID but we don't even have a unified account system here.

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