There was a huge ban wave years ago involving a highly organized group scraping COMMS in order to track other players, specifically targeting players who were about to get an onyx Guardian badge. Not only did hundreds of players receive "lifetime" bans but the Guardian Badge was also retired.
I've been told that they were not banned because of submitting Pokemon related items but trying to sneak Pokemon related photos into existing wayspot. The Pokemon item itself was legit, although it kinda looked fake. So it's submitters' fault that they didn't provide any links to prove it's official. And also, they should have submitted the item as a new wayspot instead of adding photos to existing one. Of course I don't know the whole story so there could be something that I'm missing, but getting banned for 30 days for what they have submitted years ago just sounds too harsh.
I have seen an ingress account disappear recently but can't tell if it's permanent, temporary or even if it's related to this. Agent no longer in the system message.
No idea if the player also played Pogo.
Obviously I'll be watching to see if they return in 30 days
Always dislike the "repeated low quality" bit, because we've all had nominations been rejected, sometimes multiple times, even though they meet criteria (mines always tend to be listed buildings, usually needs 3 ot 4 attempts to get through, or an appeal).
The way I'm reading that is not that someone submitted the same thing over and over (though that can be a problem if it is clearly a junk nomination). This can also apply to someone who decided to, for example, submit multiple lamp posts because "everything is being accepted". Lamp posts have never been eligible and under no thought process would they meet any of the criteria. In that case someone was taking advantage of an abusive climate to get "repeated low quality" POI approved.
Some players got banned for trying to change the image. And the player that actually tried to nominate it and had it rejected 2 years ago, was unfortunately also hit with a ban.
What about abuse such as like this? Where the user continues to tag nominations with their gamer ID shortened. I will not list it for this persons safety. It is a local player to me. I am using this photo as a reference
Please immediately provide me with information on how to terminate my WayUnfarer account without terminating my Pokémon Go account. Please provide me with a copy of the provision in the terms of service where I agreed to retroactive punishment in Pokémon Go for activities in WayUnfarer. Please provide me with a copy of every stop submission, stop report, and stop review I have submitted on WayUnfarer as well as any other data on my account here immediately.
Not sure how banning them from the game helps. Just ban them from making nominations. You let spoofers get away scott free with just a two hour cooldown!! Looks like your priorities are messed up. Way, way, more people spoof than break the wayfarer rules!!
The most players know Niantic since 2016 and they know what can happen. "Oooopie another shiny that wasnt turned on!"
understand that the people say "i wont submit anything anymore".
understand that these people arent shady pokestop dealers or gang-voters. they are just normal players that find out that Niantic is doing ALOT of errors that arent followed by a 1:1 reimbursement of the peoples cost and time.
Thank you for your help. I haven’t been successful yet, but I’ll keep trying. There has to be an actual human being who provides something resembling customer service somewhere at Niantic.
When I submitted my email I got a response from a human ( it took a couple of days) and a ticket number. I was then able to have responses to any further questions I had.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Let me try adding some clarity to the email(s) being sent out. When someone receives an email, the intro part of the email will contain the “we have detected abusive activities on their account”. However, that is not where the email will end. In the body of the email, it will also include a description of the cause for the suspension or warning. The descriptions will be improving soon as we gather more feedback. Hope this helps clarify the email situation.
I’ve seen some comments about confidence and the escalation rate of the warnings/suspensions going out and I wanted to add some clarity. When it comes to confidence, we have been working on this for months and have a very high confidence level in our detection and investigations. We have high confidence while also striving to improve. We know there might be several false positive cases for which we created the Suspension Appeal process and will be learning from that as well.
When it comes to the escalation rate of the suspensions and warnings, it’s not a 1, 2, 3 strikes and you are out method. Each infraction is taken into consideration so when we added that the warning or suspension would be proportional to the infraction, we meant it. Just like NianticAaron said, “If someone does not indulge in these practices, there is nothing to worry.”
We know there have been some high exposure cases and we have very thoroughly looked into their behavior prior to their suspensions/warnings and after if they've submitted an appeal.
I have a question: Do you know that when you take photos on an Android phone they are automatically uploaded to the cloud and Google then uses them as references on marked sites, and they appear in their references of sites, local businesses, etc. So they can appear as if they are owned by Google / Business Owner. The problem is that sometimes we have proposals that have been waiting for a long time to be voted on and when they finally pass, the evaluators investigate the origin and find the photos uploaded by Google.
It is not possible to mark our photos in any visible way, watermarks, or anything similar are not allowed.
I just saw a case like this and it turns out that even though the user presented evidence of his authorship of the photo and that he had made the proposal BEFORE Google referenced his photos, it was denied, even after the appeal (In a very bad way, by the way) the question is: If it happens to us and with the new more robust policies regarding false proposals, what will happen if we are in that case?
In your phone's app settings, for the Google Photos app, you can deny the permission for it to access media on your device. Within Photos, I believe there is also a setting to prevent it from automatically uploading photos to Google business listings. I recommend disabling the automatic upload not only for Wayfarer purposes, but also for general privacy and not to clog up Google business listings.
I have received notifications that my photos received X views, but they were only for photos I chose to upload to the listing.
I know, but I'm not Niantic so I can't answer with certainty. I just wanted to offer help with the issue, including for anyone who may be reading who has the same issue.
Comments
No.
Few players do that on Ingress to begin with.
There are the rare people who let their belongings or SWAG appear in photos, so we just reminded those people to take action themselves.
Just in case people don’t see the other comment.
There was a huge ban wave years ago involving a highly organized group scraping COMMS in order to track other players, specifically targeting players who were about to get an onyx Guardian badge. Not only did hundreds of players receive "lifetime" bans but the Guardian Badge was also retired.
Possibly before my time. I only remember getting to silver Guardian.
I've been told that they were not banned because of submitting Pokemon related items but trying to sneak Pokemon related photos into existing wayspot. The Pokemon item itself was legit, although it kinda looked fake. So it's submitters' fault that they didn't provide any links to prove it's official. And also, they should have submitted the item as a new wayspot instead of adding photos to existing one. Of course I don't know the whole story so there could be something that I'm missing, but getting banned for 30 days for what they have submitted years ago just sounds too harsh.
I have seen an ingress account disappear recently but can't tell if it's permanent, temporary or even if it's related to this. Agent no longer in the system message.
No idea if the player also played Pogo.
Obviously I'll be watching to see if they return in 30 days
Thanks. Would be interesting to know as I haven’t seen mention of it.
I think it was called RIOT, but your post reminded me of it.
I remember that system was different from IITC in that it was a server scraping system.
Therefore, those involved were punished for not abiding by the terms of service.
Always dislike the "repeated low quality" bit, because we've all had nominations been rejected, sometimes multiple times, even though they meet criteria (mines always tend to be listed buildings, usually needs 3 ot 4 attempts to get through, or an appeal).
The way I'm reading that is not that someone submitted the same thing over and over (though that can be a problem if it is clearly a junk nomination). This can also apply to someone who decided to, for example, submit multiple lamp posts because "everything is being accepted". Lamp posts have never been eligible and under no thought process would they meet any of the criteria. In that case someone was taking advantage of an abusive climate to get "repeated low quality" POI approved.
Some players got banned for trying to change the image. And the player that actually tried to nominate it and had it rejected 2 years ago, was unfortunately also hit with a ban.
What about abuse such as like this? Where the user continues to tag nominations with their gamer ID shortened. I will not list it for this persons safety. It is a local player to me. I am using this photo as a reference
Please immediately provide me with information on how to terminate my WayUnfarer account without terminating my Pokémon Go account. Please provide me with a copy of the provision in the terms of service where I agreed to retroactive punishment in Pokémon Go for activities in WayUnfarer. Please provide me with a copy of every stop submission, stop report, and stop review I have submitted on WayUnfarer as well as any other data on my account here immediately.
I hope the answer that both Hosette and I gave provided the information you require.
Not sure how banning them from the game helps. Just ban them from making nominations. You let spoofers get away scott free with just a two hour cooldown!! Looks like your priorities are messed up. Way, way, more people spoof than break the wayfarer rules!!
@ all here -
understand these people.
The most players know Niantic since 2016 and they know what can happen. "Oooopie another shiny that wasnt turned on!"
understand that the people say "i wont submit anything anymore".
understand that these people arent shady pokestop dealers or gang-voters. they are just normal players that find out that Niantic is doing ALOT of errors that arent followed by a 1:1 reimbursement of the peoples cost and time.
"Oooopsie, another shiny that wasnt turned on".
In Niantics eyes, Pogo spoofers still tend to spend money so they don't seem to care much.
Their Wayfarer database is seen as a commodity that they can sell to others or licence, so keeping a good quality database is in their interest.
Sometimes you have to look at what makes business sense to understand weird and wonderful decisions.
Thank you for your help. I haven’t been successful yet, but I’ll keep trying. There has to be an actual human being who provides something resembling customer service somewhere at Niantic.
When I submitted my email I got a response from a human ( it took a couple of days) and a ticket number. I was then able to have responses to any further questions I had.
@NianticAaron did the bot filter work properly to detect duplicates and third party photo?
This nomination is not only duplicate to another Wayspot, but also taken from street view via screenshot.
Hello @flatmatt-PGO .
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Let me try adding some clarity to the email(s) being sent out. When someone receives an email, the intro part of the email will contain the “we have detected abusive activities on their account”. However, that is not where the email will end. In the body of the email, it will also include a description of the cause for the suspension or warning. The descriptions will be improving soon as we gather more feedback. Hope this helps clarify the email situation.
Hello Explorers.
I’ve seen some comments about confidence and the escalation rate of the warnings/suspensions going out and I wanted to add some clarity. When it comes to confidence, we have been working on this for months and have a very high confidence level in our detection and investigations. We have high confidence while also striving to improve. We know there might be several false positive cases for which we created the Suspension Appeal process and will be learning from that as well.
When it comes to the escalation rate of the suspensions and warnings, it’s not a 1, 2, 3 strikes and you are out method. Each infraction is taken into consideration so when we added that the warning or suspension would be proportional to the infraction, we meant it. Just like NianticAaron said, “If someone does not indulge in these practices, there is nothing to worry.”
We know there have been some high exposure cases and we have very thoroughly looked into their behavior prior to their suspensions/warnings and after if they've submitted an appeal.
I have a question: Do you know that when you take photos on an Android phone they are automatically uploaded to the cloud and Google then uses them as references on marked sites, and they appear in their references of sites, local businesses, etc. So they can appear as if they are owned by Google / Business Owner. The problem is that sometimes we have proposals that have been waiting for a long time to be voted on and when they finally pass, the evaluators investigate the origin and find the photos uploaded by Google.
It is not possible to mark our photos in any visible way, watermarks, or anything similar are not allowed.
I just saw a case like this and it turns out that even though the user presented evidence of his authorship of the photo and that he had made the proposal BEFORE Google referenced his photos, it was denied, even after the appeal (In a very bad way, by the way) the question is: If it happens to us and with the new more robust policies regarding false proposals, what will happen if we are in that case?
I use an Android and have never had this happen to me.
you see?
i have android and have never had this happen to me.
In your phone's app settings, for the Google Photos app, you can deny the permission for it to access media on your device. Within Photos, I believe there is also a setting to prevent it from automatically uploading photos to Google business listings. I recommend disabling the automatic upload not only for Wayfarer purposes, but also for general privacy and not to clog up Google business listings.
I have received notifications that my photos received X views, but they were only for photos I chose to upload to the listing.
Thats no my question (with all respect), the point is: What will do Wayfarer/Niantic in the case that this happens? Ban us? only reject the propossal?
I know, but I'm not Niantic so I can't answer with certainty. I just wanted to offer help with the issue, including for anyone who may be reading who has the same issue.