What to do with lots of possibly fake utility boxes Germany

pepijn77777-PGOpepijn77777-PGO Posts: 30 ✭✭✭
edited July 2022 in Criteria Clarifications

I've been getting a lot of reviews from Germany with painted utility boxes. Most of them use the same photo for both the waypoint and the supporting info. Sometimes the supporting image has a slightly different angle but not enough get a clear picture of the suroundings. The location on google earth is almost always either under trees or on a real utility box that rarely can be identified as being the right one.

Because streetview is rarely available in Germany and these submissions convienently don't have photospheres, it is almost always impossible to say for sure if it is a totally fake submission, a real box with some photoshop or real but not a verifyable location. I'm getting so many of these that I'm beginning to suspect this a case of mass fraud where Germans realized this and are taking adavantage of it, or am I going crazy?

Almost every german submission I get also has 1 or more of these in the nearby spots that are already accepted and look pretty fake to me as well.

I will include an example below, notice how there's 2 utility boxes already accepted nearby. I looked at both locations on the map and sure enough 1 was under a tree and the other a box that coudlnt be verufied from just the wayspot picture.


I've been rejecting most of these as fake submissions, or should I just be giving it a 1 star for cannot be found at the bottom, while judging the rest of the nomination as if it were real?

Comments

  • dustinyeeaah-PGOdustinyeeaah-PGO Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭

    It's always has been an issue here, no StreetView makes it even easier. Most of the pictures are from one website who specialises in beautifying utility boxes. I won't write the name, but you can pretty much find it easily. What you can do is, be harsh when you see this kind of nominations. They are usually in a weird format, so click the enhanced picture. Small picture with visible pixels -> insta fake reject. If both show the same photo, the same process. You'll learn that 95% of these nominations are fake. It's really an issue in germany.

    A useful tip for you might be to open the enhanced picture and right click -> send to GoogleLens (I don't know the exact wording, but something like that). Google usually finds the stolen motifs and you can be sure it's a fake. Searching with Bing also works, but it's not as good as GoogleLens.

    We also have some german Wayfarer channels on Discord and Telegram where you can ask if we know these pictures and whether it's a fake (Wayfarer D/A/CH)!

  • dustinyeeaah-PGOdustinyeeaah-PGO Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I should have taken a closer look. The red Pokéball and Bisasam ones were painted recently by a Community member and are definitely not in this city. The pictures were most likely stolen during review. So you have done everything right when you rejected this one. We will clean up

  • pepijn77777-PGOpepijn77777-PGO Posts: 30 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Dustin, I will join the discord later today.

    Yea, I already found some of those boxes with reverse image search so those were even easier rejects.

    By clean up, you mean report the invalid waypoints? So I wont have to do that anymore?

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