Duplicate proposals, account hacked? Help!
xNightlyWolFx-PGO
Posts: 3 ✭✭
I have recently uploaded proposals for pokestops in my city, one of the proposals was recently approved, but there is another one that is still pending. Today while evaluating proposals I find one from a city that is more than 200 km away and has exactly MY PHOTOS AND TEXT. EXACTLY THE SAME and that proposal was not accepted yet !!! How is that possible? I attach screenshots. I live in Trenque Lauquen, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Proposal is for the headquarters of INTA, I leave a link that shows REAL ub ication. https://inta.gob.ar/trenquelauquen The Proposal that I denounce is in the city of 9 DE JULIO, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA There is also ANOTHER DUPLICATE PORTAL, but I will report it in a new post. I am concerned that my account is somehow being hacked. I have a history of accepted and totally valid proposals and I don't deserve this to happen, help! In the attached files, I differentiate the false ones from the real ones with their respective names. I am sorry that my English is not perfect, but I would like you to help me with this case!
Tagged:
Comments
@NianticGiffard would you please take a look at this?
@xNightlyWolFx-PGO I don't suspect your account was hacked, but if you are afraid it was, you should change your password to the affected account(s). Likely, somebody downloaded the images while reviewing and uploaded them as their own nomination.
"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness." - Oscar Wilde
@NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard It looks like there's a case here being reported of someone taking photos of existing wayspots and trying to submit them elsehwere to create fake wayspots.
Edit - Gendgi beat me to it lol
I'm a little surprised Niantic can't run an auto detection to reverse image search a picture against it's own internal database of accepted Wayspots.
A lot of their photos are very high resolution, might take too long.
Can't take longer than the 18 months my nominations take in voting 😆🤔
Thanks for surfacing this, @xNightlyWolFx-PGO! Concurring with @Gendgi-PGO (truly loved how he supported his statement through a quote), if you believe your account is compromised, please change your login password immediately. You could also reach out to our dedicated team through in-app.
Having said that, as we speak I have shared your report with the abuse team for review. Thank you!
You could just store the md5sum or some other quick and easy hash, in the database, for every accepted nomination. Attach a key to that column. When you submit a picture, it could compare the hash, and if it finds a match, it could then do a more in-depth pixel compare. It would only catch exact copies, not crops or re-compressed jpgs, but people copying pictures are probably pretty lazy.
@NianticCasey-ING @NianticGiffard
Hello everybody! Thank you very much for following the thread.
I tell you that I discard the option that my account has been hacked since checking in Intel of Ingress I found other wayspot requested by other players that are also duplicated. And they were approved very recently. I think there is a very serious problem with the security of the wayspot ordering system, as no one (including me) has loaned their account.
From my city we hope that this can be solved since we are few players but organized so that we can all enjoy respecting the rules of the game. What happens is very unfair to us since we ourselves pre-evaluate the requests before they are uploaded to the web
I will try to get the name of the player who is making the proposals, perhaps through Facebook or Twitter, since due to the well-known situation of pandema, it is impossible to travel.
thank you very much to all!
xNightlyWolFx
Pokémon Trainer and Agent
As you see more examples, you can continue to submit more screenshots and/or locations of nominations for the Wayfarer abuse team to look into. If you are finding "stolen" ones already accepted into the Intel map, you can also share those Intel links.