Abuse and Appeals for Private Property Reports

The local PoGo community has started to use the private property complaint form as a way to get back at "enemy" players. Basically all you need to do is to complain about people lingering near your home and the waypoint will be removed quickly 99% of the time if it is within 40m of a house. As you can guess in rural areas waypoints are almost always within 40m of ANY private property. Even if proof of your address is requested by the support agent, a faked letter head is easy enough to create and accepted.

People are even bragging about how many stops they haven been able to remove with this strategy. As of now, there is AFAIK no process to appeal these faked reports. I therefore suggest for such a process to be established and to improve the process of establishing the real address of a reporter - e.g. by requiring a copy of a public id document.

Comments

  • Sugarstarzkill-PGOSugarstarzkill-PGO Posts: 437 ✭✭✭✭✭

    You can appeal removals in the Invalid Wayspot Appeals thread, a few above this one. Be prepared to take geotagged photos of it/photospheres to show the area where the POI was before it was removed.


    If people are claiming to be the homeowners nearby, it might be difficult to disprove that. It's worth a try though.

  • TheFarix-PGOTheFarix-PGO Posts: 5,063 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'm pretty sure that as part of the process, the person requesting removal via the form must verify that they are the property owner. If you have direct evidence that someone is falsely identifying themselves as the property owner and submitting counterfeit documentation, you report it though one of the support channels.

  • Toladoc-INGToladoc-ING Posts: 9 ✭✭

    People are claiming to be homeowners nearby. If the POI is there is completely irrelevant - it is going to be removed due to the "homeowner" requests. It is quite impossible to prove that they do this though, and even if you could do it once nothing prevents them from doing it again.

    "I'm pretty sure that as part of the process, the person requesting removal via the form must verify that they are the property owner"

    Yes, the verification consist of sending the support team a letter head of any kind of utility bill to this address. Anyone with some Word skills can fake that easily and without any legal repercussions. And since these requests are designed to be sent by non-players you do not risk your account either.

  • TheKingEngine-INGTheKingEngine-ING Posts: 347 ✭✭✭

    oops...sounds like a loophole about which normal players couldn't do much....

Sign In or Register to comment.