ABUSE - Tampa / Port St. Lucie fake wayspot and photosphere scheme
Yesterday I discovered a case of abuse that is connected between Tampa and Port St. Lucie. In Tampa I discovered an apartment building that has 4 clearly fake wayspots on top of it (one of them is not a Portal but does exist in Pokemon Go). It turns out that four fake photospheres were placed at the location to create four fake wayspots. By looking at the history of the user who submitted the photospheres, I was able to find one additional misplaced wayspot in Tampa, and 17 abusive wayspots on a private mansion estate in Port St. Lucie. The mansion estate is three parcels of private residential property all owned by the same person (confirmed by the St. Lucie County Property Appraiser’s website). The wayspots within the estate are all located on PRP, many are placed at wrong locations to manipulate the gameboard, and several of them abusively try to present themselves as being part of a “community park” despite clearly being on top of houses or driveways within the estate. Additionally, the fake photospheres that were used at the Tampa apartment clearly originate from this estate, and duplicates of the abusive Tampa portals exist on the estate as well.
A full list of abusive wayspots can be found below:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jaIpcHKvutDpDWU2I3pJ598R3GjcAzeTiFhtqfYWfGw/edit?usp=sharing
Comments
I encountered the same thing when I was reviewing one of those abusive location edits. The satellite view shows what looks like an estate or apartment buildings with plenty of parking spots. However the photospheres show what can only be described as a large court yard or park. Clearly this is abusive with the intent to manipulate and deceive.
FYI the person has JUST uploaded more duplicate photospheres on Google Maps at this same location. They are likely preparing to re-submit (if the account isn't already banned). As stated these photospheres are from a location over 133 miles away... and placed INSIDE an apartment building. very fake.
Also, I have been submitting right next door at the community college. And can confirm 100% these are fake and abuse.
@NianticGiffard I am getting edits in the system related to these! They are 100% fake. It looks like they have been removed from ingress but I am still seeing them in PoGo today. And just now I got an edit review...
The location "Swinging Gazebo" and "Giant Green Gazebo" are still in PoGo. Not in ingress but they have remained in game as a gym and stop. Please remove these as they are fake. ~ 27.965924188275217, -82.32144825467591
Just got ANOTHER edit review for one of these FAKE waypoints that are still in PoGo. Please remove! @NianticGiffard
Thanks for the flag! We have reviewed the report and have taken action on the 20 Wayspots and 3 Wayfinders in accordance with our policies. While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO, or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account.
Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.
@NianticGiffard They're at it again!!! I just got a review for another wayspot RIGHT ONTOP OF THE APARTMENT AGAIN. I'm attaching a photo pending approval.
They have uploaded a fake park AND a dog park photosphere so that is probably the next thing to pop up. Please ban this person and remove the 2+ nominations that are in the system. https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/112366885567038869287/photos/@27.9659357,-82.3211471,3a,75y,69.53h,67.52t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipPgcN5ealNSdne7zKuSYsvE7spV5GaYQr1WpTli!2e10!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPgcN5ealNSdne7zKuSYsvE7spV5GaYQr1WpTli%3Dw365-h260-k-no-pi-20-ya44-ro-0-fo100!7i11264!8i5632!4m3!8m2!3m1!1e1
ANNDDD apparently the "Swinging Gazebo" is still in PoGo but not in Ingress. Please remove that too.
@NianticGiffard The playground has been approved... please remove 27.965960962830035, -82.3217791477751
@NianticDanbocat
Can you see why so many people think that Wayfarer is a joke?
Yeah. This person needs to be taken out... Of Niantic products. Its the same account, I wont post it here but on Ingress their account name shows up its the same person so nothing was done with them. They need to have their email and accounts banned for life since they obviously only want to play the system.
The fact that they come here and troll with their multiple accounts just shows that they know getting banned is unlikely to happen. Edit:I thought this was the other thread about abuse in the same area
There's a proverb in Bahasa Indonesia which says:
"Mati satu, tumbuh seribu" (Lose one, gain a thousand)
This will be an endless fight of Niantic against those abusers, as if their accounts got banned they'll just create more and more accounts, quickly leveling up to level 38, and do the same thing again.
Come on, aren't their daily life actually more important than the games?
Yes, because if this one person gets banned they'll multiply like rabbits into thousands of accounts... If the email they use is banned its going to help for a long while... This person clearly wasn't punished by getting their account banned they must have received a slap on the wrist email saying "don't do it again".
"Come on, aren't their daily life actually more important than the games?" - What is this supposed to mean??? Their daily life of cheating is more important? Uh, no.
Sure, lets all of the cheaters roam free and mess up the map! Sounds like fun!
Another in review with a FAKE photosphere by "Sasuke Susano". This is 100% fake inside the person's apartment, same abusers. Please take action! @NianticGiffard
@NianticGiffard Person is creating the locations in RED. The 2 Photosphere/nominations this time ARE inside the complex. BUT the correct locations are GREEN dog park, and BLUE Playground. In the photospheres you can clearly see its across from a blue building #6, so they are really trying to game the system.
@NianticGiffard Again the playground has been approved... please remove 27.965960962830035, -82.3217791477751 OR maybe you can get it moved to 27.964622984948953, -82.32052711834656 since that is the REAL location. Thanks!
This person has also uploaded a 3rd photosphere that is actually located at the most southern area of the complex, but is inside of their 1st apartment in the complex north. So there may be a 3rd FAKE nomination coming through the pipes. Please take action.
The dog park should be ~ 27.964680465683468, -82.32180766540642
And the 3rd one is a pavilion/car wash area? if its in the system it should be ~ 27.963357624490335, -82.32243255107068
Or just straight remove all 3+ nominations
Our team will review it and take the necessary actions. Thanks for reporting.
Thank you!
Apologies for the late response. We have reviewed the reported Wayspots and have taken action on them and the Wayfinder in accordance with our policies. While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO, or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account.
Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.
@NianticGiffard This person is at it again. They just got another fake placed ontop of their apartment building that is a FAKE from the photosphere scheme again. I am attaching a photo and reporting the photosphere as per usual...
Please remove FAKE abuse portal/stop "Cactus Art Bench" @ ~27.965972022923495, -82.32111943850767
"Cactus Art Bench" @ ~27.965972022923495, -82.32111943850767 is fake please remove and take action on this REPEAT offender.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino when are you going to take real action against abuse?
Are you aware that the current go to (after warnings) is to ban them from Wayfarer....
The problem is that they are still able to submit nominations...
I bet a lot of these abuse cases, the offenders never even used wayfarer at all.
Additionally, even if @NianticGiffard will always tell this:
"....While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO, or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account..."
Don't forget that those people are multiaccounting. I wonder how many scapegoat accounts of them have been sacrificed for good.
I'm sure they won't admit it, but I've never hear of anyone having their actual acct impacted in any way due to wayfarer... And st. Cloud would be a prime example to share this since they're so outspoken.
Thanks for bringing it to my notice. We have taken action on it and the Wayfinder in accordance with our policies.
@NianticGiffard I work in operations (essentially a site reliability engineer) for a household-name internet company, and I have a few decades of tech industry experience under my belt. I'd like to speak to you briefly about operational excellence and how Niantic can provide a better experience for its customers.
Something that is strongly baked into my company's culture is that we investigate our failures so that we can do better. If we have a significant customer-impacting event we document it well then have a blameless post-mortem in which we identify the failure points and lay out a set of corrective actions to ensure that this problem doesn't happen again. Here's a trivial example of how a deep-dive might go.
Problem: Three people have sprained their ankles on the second floor this week.
Why did they sprain their ankles? They tripped and fell walking past the copier room.
Why did they trip there? There's a power cord strung across the hallway from a desk into the copier room.
Why is there a power cord strung across the hallway? The desks near the copier room don't have enough power and they're using power from the copier room.
Great, that sounds like a root cause. How do we fix that? Step one: Get facilities to run additional power to those desks. Step two: Audit the other desk clusters to see if any others need power. Step three: Educate employees on how to contact facilities if their work areas need additional power.
There, we have a root cause and three action items. Each of those action items would become an internal ticket with a realistic due date, and escalation up the management chain if the item isn't addressed by its due date. This work pattern is pretty common among SREs and similar teams, and it ensures that we don't make the same dumb mistakes over and over.
Another thing that's baked into our culture is that we proactively look for small recurring problems and solve them systemically. For example, let's say that we have a monitor on our systems that goes into alarm and pages someone twice a week. When that alarm goes off the engineer typically pushes a couple of buttons to un-stick a deployment and then all is well. Something like that is no big deal if it happens once or twice a year but if it happens regularly it is very much not OK. We even have a term for this: toil. We watch out for toil and when we find it we dig until we figure out what's causing the problem and then we invest in fixing it systemically rather than having to manually push buttons twice a week to unstick a build.
A third thing that we do is we think systemically and look for broader problems. "Hey, we figured out that the FlibberWigget service had a recurring build issue because [technical mumbo jumbo]. Do any of our other services have the same problem? Let's do an audit and fix anything else that has the same issue."
I feel like Niantic rarely takes the next step on problems, and I see that a lot with Wayfarer. If I was the Operational Excellence Czar for Wayfarer I would be saying things like this:
The system that you have now relies on player reports and human intervention. That is a terrible, horrible, very bad no good system. It's a bad experience for your customers. It's expensive for Niantic because it requires ongoing human intervention. Seeing a neverending stream of these reports undermines confidence in Wayfarer. Worst of all, most issues don't get reported so the vast majority of your bad wayspots remain in the game.
In my career I've worked at Fortune 100 companies and at a lot of startups. At startups you're doing your best just to get the product out the door and keep it running so band-aids and quick fixes are part of normal operations. There are always cultural growing pains when a company transitions from a startup to a long-term stable business, and often those pains center around needing structure and long-term thinking rather than more and more quick fixes. It seems to me that this is where Niantic is at right now, and it's time to start looking at issues systemically rather than playing hammer-a-mole with whatever customers report.