Again, to reiterate: the base HAS contacted Niantic. To be ignored. Several times.
On the 27th of February 2020, on the 23rd of January 2020, I could list all the dates the base has been in direct contact with Niantic, as been made blindingly obvious but you seem to be intentionally ignoring me telling you: the base has directly contacted Niantic to remove these POI from their base. Niantic has ignored them.
this is a further escalation to try and get them removed.
Lol yes, I’m really not publicly naming any individuals at the RAF on a public forum, but as you’ve said, I’ve repeatedly made it clear (even in the original post) the base has been in direct contact with Niantic to have these all removed, to no avail.
I feel that I will get downvotes/disagree for what I will say, but I think the same as @TheFarix-PGO.
The only way for an "official removal request" is here : https://pokemongolive.com/en/report-location/ It has to be done by the "property owner" or in this case, the military base commanding officer.
Nothing in all the screenshots provided by OP shows that a commanding officer made a request. We can only see chats with Niantic support stating that "someone already filled a request" (but we see nothing of this) and Niantic relplies that they didn't received any official requests.
As we all know, since the beginning of Wayfarer, submissions inside Military bases are automatic 1* rejection, but it was not always the case. Submission inside military base was formely accepted in the old time of Ingress (before dec 2017) and when the decision was made to change this criteria to no longer accept military bases, Niantic also stated that existing wayspots can stay in the game unless an official removal request is made. Maybe what you are reporting are all grandfathered.
Q79: Will NIA consider treating all military portals (i.e. including those that are "grandfathered") as invalid?
A79: No.
From December 19th 2017 AMA :
Q82: Hello. Last week we had the precision that portals in military areas should be rejected. But... previously, a lot of us (I'm included) took your "if one can access then it's legit"-statement to assume that portals in military areas were legit, especially some vanguard of my mother tongue ( :-* ) That is a real turnaround. So, 1. Are portals in military areas before 11-dec-2017 still legit ? 2. If not, will NIA remove all of them, without any exception 3. What about the grey zones, I mean the military areas that open to public access sundays for catholic cult, or every 4-years for nautical events?
A82: The portal candidate criteria is subject to change. This does not mean that past selections are now currently invalid. It means that going forward these are invalid.
I would imagine that the RAF have the means to shut down all Niantic servers in the UK until this issue is solved. If the commander of the base really wants to get Niantic CEO on the phone, he will.
At this point Niantic are acting like they want to be sued tbh
I hope your base commander friend escalates this to the right people @ZombieSazza-ING and I think they only way to get it removed at this point is to go this way.
People are conveniently forgetting that RAF property is private property. In the UK we have national trust houses that are private residences for all bar maybe a few weekends of the year. Even tho people can visit, at the end of the day someone lives there who doesn't need people looking to gain unlawful access.
Private property is also not limited to houses. Warehouses, factories, and other organisational buildings may not want us trespassing for a pokestop. Sure some people will have access but on the whole you wouldn't want dodgy looking phone savvy people hanging around and trying to scan and add photos to pokestops (who knows they could be a rival organisation).
I'm sure Niantic wouldn't be happy if we traipsed all over their private property to get at a pokestop that was only "open to the public" at their discretion.
Yes, I’ve given them this thread, along with telling them what pokemon/ingress scans are and the security risk those pose alone have them worried, so they’re highly aware of this thread.
These are not grandfathered. As you will see if you read the OP, ZombieSazza's contact at the base has already successfully had the grandfathered one removed. These are new ones that were incorrectly approved - either because the reviewers didn't twig that they were on a military base, or because sufficient reviewers chose to ignore the clear guidance that wayspots should not be approved on a military base.
"These are new ones that were incorrectly approved - either because the reviewers didn't twig that they were on a military base, or because sufficient reviewers chose to ignore the clear guidance that wayspots should not be approved on a military base."
Looks like I missed that part of the OP... If these wayspots are new one, approved by community after the new rules about military bases, then I agree with all ppl saying that these should not be in game and should never have been approved.
Niantic should then investigate further about who is submitting against rules, and who are approving them against rules because honest reviewers alre also losing agreements by rejecting correctly these.
If this is the case, then they should easily be removed. I don't really understand why Niantic doesn't have geofences drawn around military bases to ensure that the nominations there don't even reach the reviewers, but are rejected by location outright.
But it still didn't meet any removal criteria, according to @NianticKN-ING
To the OP, at the time the base commander requested to remove them, did they use the form in Ingress/GO support web? If they did but still ignored, you may need to ask them one more time using the form then.
I also cannot disclose the RAF individuals involved, because that would mean leaking their details. I also cannot disclose their emails due to it being a secure MOD (Ministry of Defence) email address, but I can share this if it helps, which was from a Pokemon removal form, which I have already stipulated was the original removal request process (which was ignored several times). The ingress removal request is a further escalation due to the Pokemon removal request being ignored.
Seems to be a permanent problem. I live about 100km from Ramstein Airbase. I regularly receive nominations of recreational objects within the base and the duplicate map is never empty.
I just got a little shock when I read the title and had to find out that someone in all seriousness wants to delete portals in a military base. Fortunately, Niantic is reasonable and has declined the appeal.
To be fair, anybody dumb enough to try breaking into a military base to play a game probably doesn't have much going for them. Getting shot would be a merciful release from the unending, hellish vortex of stupid that is their life.
In case you ignored what I said, I said that email was the only thing I could show because it’s the least sensitive email, and I also said the following:
these are POI from this year
the base commander HAS been in touch with Niantic and made requests to have them removed, to be ignored
base commander has also been ignored several times
they used the Pokemon go removal form, the same form they used last year which got a grandfathered POI removed
and as I also said, I wouldn’t be leaking any sensitive information or names, so I can’t share anything other than that one email, everything else would leak individuals at base
Well @NianticCasey-ING since everything explained by the OP is clear here, would you and the team please check if the base commander DID sent the removal request? I'm sure the request mail is still there, unprocessed.
and yes, the emails would’ve been in January 2020 and February 2020 - Niantic originally were in contact but became unhelpful and stopped responding altogether, yet a year prior in January of 2019, Niantic removed a Grandfather POI at their request. I don’t know what else to tell you, but Niantic could easily find all email correspondence if they bothered looking, and actually responded to them.
To reiterate: the RAF have done this several times, through the Pokemon go report, to be ignored. You should easily be able to find emails from the MOD during January 2020, and February 2020.
are you seriously suggesting the RAF contact you, again, through the Pokemon go report form, to likely be ignored again?
GC Layden will have to be the one to make the request along with verifying their identity. Anyone other than GC Layden will likely be ignored. If GC Layden wasn't the one who made those requests or GC Layden didn't follow the procedures to verify his identity earlier this year, that would explain why Niantic ignored them.
Just to be clear, there have been many attempts by individuals fasly claiming to be a property owner or senior executives of the organization that owns the property in order to have certain (strategic) Wayspots removed. This is why Niantic has policies in place to verify identity and why players cannot serve as intermediaries.
This is getting tiresome, this is the very last time I’ll explain this to you, after this I’m just not responding to you, it’s really not worth the time, effort and hassle:
the requests they made last year were listened to, they removed a POI at their request
they are ignoring requests in early 2020, despite being given identification and proof
hence I’m asking if Niantic is seriously telling me that the RAF has to go through the entire process, again and again, to be ignored, again and again, when they put the request through themselves via the Pokemon go removal form (and I’m just a contact who plays Niantic games)
all of this has been made blindingly clear, along with me saying “all niantic has to do is look through their emails from January 2020 and February 2020” to find emails that were ignored and described to me as “unhelpful”, and to look through their emails from January 2019 for proof that Niantic has previously collaborated with the base to remove live POI.
I’m extremely fed up repeating myself at this point, please just read the ample information given and stop jumping down my throat as if I’m the one in the wrong, because I’m telling you the base has done exactly what they were meant to do with the official complains process to have live POI removed, and have been ignored, despite the base trying to further contact and follow up with Niantic, and despite my attempts as a contact trying to get Niantic respond to the base, not me, the base.
all Niantic needs to do is go through their emails from January 2020 and February 2020, and reply to the base. That is all they ask, so they can talk to someone directly. That is ALL Niantic has to do, but they aren’t, and that’s a huge problem.
why are you acting like you are the fountain of all knowledge when you can't even be bothered to read OPs posts properly or understand the basics of the situation.
firstly last year Base commander contacted Niantic to remove portals on the base, this year same commander contacts Niantic. this year though Niantic ignore the requests for removal. OP is just trying to get Niantic to look for the emails which base commander sent because they followed the correct procedure.
You have a very patient base commander, indeed. If I was him, I would not bother to type requests that are designed for private people or discuss with Niantic staff. If this happens to several bases (I suppose he would be able to find out) and the UK military in general does not appreciate wayspots on their bases, make it an issue of national security. Maybe the British Embassy in US would politely ask one last time to shut those portals down. If not, make British Telecom block all data traffic concerning Niantic games in UK. It is a server based game, no server, no play. I am sure Niantic will react within minutes in this case...
And please tell us why do you need all this? well, there are portals or pokestops on the territory, everyone understands that there is a military base, a fence, barbed wire, a checkpoint, everyone can read, respectively, each player must think about their own safety first of all, in the same way, then you can ask to remove the portals on the pier because you can fall into the water and drown.
Comments
Again, to reiterate: the base HAS contacted Niantic. To be ignored. Several times.
On the 27th of February 2020, on the 23rd of January 2020, I could list all the dates the base has been in direct contact with Niantic, as been made blindingly obvious but you seem to be intentionally ignoring me telling you: the base has directly contacted Niantic to remove these POI from their base. Niantic has ignored them.
this is a further escalation to try and get them removed.
Lol yes, I’m really not publicly naming any individuals at the RAF on a public forum, but as you’ve said, I’ve repeatedly made it clear (even in the original post) the base has been in direct contact with Niantic to have these all removed, to no avail.
I feel that I will get downvotes/disagree for what I will say, but I think the same as @TheFarix-PGO.
The only way for an "official removal request" is here : https://pokemongolive.com/en/report-location/ It has to be done by the "property owner" or in this case, the military base commanding officer.
Nothing in all the screenshots provided by OP shows that a commanding officer made a request. We can only see chats with Niantic support stating that "someone already filled a request" (but we see nothing of this) and Niantic relplies that they didn't received any official requests.
As we all know, since the beginning of Wayfarer, submissions inside Military bases are automatic 1* rejection, but it was not always the case. Submission inside military base was formely accepted in the old time of Ingress (before dec 2017) and when the decision was made to change this criteria to no longer accept military bases, Niantic also stated that existing wayspots can stay in the game unless an official removal request is made. Maybe what you are reporting are all grandfathered.
From NianticCasey on other similar situations :
Also : https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/3043/military-bases-seem-to-be-getting-through-wayfarer-is-there-a-process-to-flag-these-locations#
Also From NianticCasey on the Ingress forum : https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/44213#Comment_44213
From AUG 2019 Ingress AMA :
Q79: Will NIA consider treating all military portals (i.e. including those that are "grandfathered") as invalid?
A79: No.
From December 19th 2017 AMA :
Q82: Hello. Last week we had the precision that portals in military areas should be rejected. But... previously, a lot of us (I'm included) took your "if one can access then it's legit"-statement to assume that portals in military areas were legit, especially some vanguard of my mother tongue ( :-* ) That is a real turnaround. So, 1. Are portals in military areas before 11-dec-2017 still legit ? 2. If not, will NIA remove all of them, without any exception 3. What about the grey zones, I mean the military areas that open to public access sundays for catholic cult, or every 4-years for nautical events?
A82: The portal candidate criteria is subject to change. This does not mean that past selections are now currently invalid. It means that going forward these are invalid.
I would imagine that the RAF have the means to shut down all Niantic servers in the UK until this issue is solved. If the commander of the base really wants to get Niantic CEO on the phone, he will.
At this point Niantic are acting like they want to be sued tbh
I hope your base commander friend escalates this to the right people @ZombieSazza-ING and I think they only way to get it removed at this point is to go this way.
People are conveniently forgetting that RAF property is private property. In the UK we have national trust houses that are private residences for all bar maybe a few weekends of the year. Even tho people can visit, at the end of the day someone lives there who doesn't need people looking to gain unlawful access.
Private property is also not limited to houses. Warehouses, factories, and other organisational buildings may not want us trespassing for a pokestop. Sure some people will have access but on the whole you wouldn't want dodgy looking phone savvy people hanging around and trying to scan and add photos to pokestops (who knows they could be a rival organisation).
I'm sure Niantic wouldn't be happy if we traipsed all over their private property to get at a pokestop that was only "open to the public" at their discretion.
Yes, I’ve given them this thread, along with telling them what pokemon/ingress scans are and the security risk those pose alone have them worried, so they’re highly aware of this thread.
These are not grandfathered. As you will see if you read the OP, ZombieSazza's contact at the base has already successfully had the grandfathered one removed. These are new ones that were incorrectly approved - either because the reviewers didn't twig that they were on a military base, or because sufficient reviewers chose to ignore the clear guidance that wayspots should not be approved on a military base.
"These are new ones that were incorrectly approved - either because the reviewers didn't twig that they were on a military base, or because sufficient reviewers chose to ignore the clear guidance that wayspots should not be approved on a military base."
Looks like I missed that part of the OP... If these wayspots are new one, approved by community after the new rules about military bases, then I agree with all ppl saying that these should not be in game and should never have been approved.
Niantic should then investigate further about who is submitting against rules, and who are approving them against rules because honest reviewers alre also losing agreements by rejecting correctly these.
If this is the case, then they should easily be removed. I don't really understand why Niantic doesn't have geofences drawn around military bases to ensure that the nominations there don't even reach the reviewers, but are rejected by location outright.
But it still didn't meet any removal criteria, according to @NianticKN-ING
To the OP, at the time the base commander requested to remove them, did they use the form in Ingress/GO support web? If they did but still ignored, you may need to ask them one more time using the form then.
To answer:
These are recent from this year.
I also cannot disclose the RAF individuals involved, because that would mean leaking their details. I also cannot disclose their emails due to it being a secure MOD (Ministry of Defence) email address, but I can share this if it helps, which was from a Pokemon removal form, which I have already stipulated was the original removal request process (which was ignored several times). The ingress removal request is a further escalation due to the Pokemon removal request being ignored.
It is not a civilian area.
It is literally a restricted access airbase. Believe it or not, service personnel like sandwiches too.
Seems to be a permanent problem. I live about 100km from Ramstein Airbase. I regularly receive nominations of recreational objects within the base and the duplicate map is never empty.
I just got a little shock when I read the title and had to find out that someone in all seriousness wants to delete portals in a military base. Fortunately, Niantic is reasonable and has declined the appeal.
So in other words, someone who is not the base commander. The request must come from the commanding officer of the base.
To be fair, anybody dumb enough to try breaking into a military base to play a game probably doesn't have much going for them. Getting shot would be a merciful release from the unending, hellish vortex of stupid that is their life.
In case you ignored what I said, I said that email was the only thing I could show because it’s the least sensitive email, and I also said the following:
these are POI from this year
the base commander HAS been in touch with Niantic and made requests to have them removed, to be ignored
base commander has also been ignored several times
they used the Pokemon go removal form, the same form they used last year which got a grandfathered POI removed
and as I also said, I wouldn’t be leaking any sensitive information or names, so I can’t share anything other than that one email, everything else would leak individuals at base
But they shouldn't have been approved in the first place, hence why OP and the base commander are trying to have them removed.
NIA aren't bring reasonable, they're leaving themselves open to trouble if someone tries to access the wayspots illegally.
Or just spoof anyway to be safe :p
Well @NianticCasey-ING since everything explained by the OP is clear here, would you and the team please check if the base commander DID sent the removal request? I'm sure the request mail is still there, unprocessed.
Since the name of the Base commander is publicly available online (https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/stations/raf-lossiemouth/), let's just be clear that the only one person that can make a request to Niantic is Group Captain Chris Layden.
If this has already be done several times as you said, then @NianticCasey-ING should investigate further.
Would be even nicer if Niantic could respond to the emails they’ve been sent.
and I wasn’t prepared to name anyone, I don’t care if you can find out those details online, that would’ve been extremely bad faith from me.
Let’s not encourage spoofing lmao
and yes, the emails would’ve been in January 2020 and February 2020 - Niantic originally were in contact but became unhelpful and stopped responding altogether, yet a year prior in January of 2019, Niantic removed a Grandfather POI at their request. I don’t know what else to tell you, but Niantic could easily find all email correspondence if they bothered looking, and actually responded to them.
Thanks for the appeal, Agent. In order to address this location. Please reach out to our dedicated team: https://www.pokemongolive.com/report-location
To reiterate: the RAF have done this several times, through the Pokemon go report, to be ignored. You should easily be able to find emails from the MOD during January 2020, and February 2020.
are you seriously suggesting the RAF contact you, again, through the Pokemon go report form, to likely be ignored again?
GC Layden will have to be the one to make the request along with verifying their identity. Anyone other than GC Layden will likely be ignored. If GC Layden wasn't the one who made those requests or GC Layden didn't follow the procedures to verify his identity earlier this year, that would explain why Niantic ignored them.
Just to be clear, there have been many attempts by individuals fasly claiming to be a property owner or senior executives of the organization that owns the property in order to have certain (strategic) Wayspots removed. This is why Niantic has policies in place to verify identity and why players cannot serve as intermediaries.
This is getting tiresome, this is the very last time I’ll explain this to you, after this I’m just not responding to you, it’s really not worth the time, effort and hassle:
the requests they made last year were listened to, they removed a POI at their request
they are ignoring requests in early 2020, despite being given identification and proof
hence I’m asking if Niantic is seriously telling me that the RAF has to go through the entire process, again and again, to be ignored, again and again, when they put the request through themselves via the Pokemon go removal form (and I’m just a contact who plays Niantic games)
all of this has been made blindingly clear, along with me saying “all niantic has to do is look through their emails from January 2020 and February 2020” to find emails that were ignored and described to me as “unhelpful”, and to look through their emails from January 2019 for proof that Niantic has previously collaborated with the base to remove live POI.
I’m extremely fed up repeating myself at this point, please just read the ample information given and stop jumping down my throat as if I’m the one in the wrong, because I’m telling you the base has done exactly what they were meant to do with the official complains process to have live POI removed, and have been ignored, despite the base trying to further contact and follow up with Niantic, and despite my attempts as a contact trying to get Niantic respond to the base, not me, the base.
all Niantic needs to do is go through their emails from January 2020 and February 2020, and reply to the base. That is all they ask, so they can talk to someone directly. That is ALL Niantic has to do, but they aren’t, and that’s a huge problem.
why are you acting like you are the fountain of all knowledge when you can't even be bothered to read OPs posts properly or understand the basics of the situation.
firstly last year Base commander contacted Niantic to remove portals on the base, this year same commander contacts Niantic. this year though Niantic ignore the requests for removal. OP is just trying to get Niantic to look for the emails which base commander sent because they followed the correct procedure.
You have a very patient base commander, indeed. If I was him, I would not bother to type requests that are designed for private people or discuss with Niantic staff. If this happens to several bases (I suppose he would be able to find out) and the UK military in general does not appreciate wayspots on their bases, make it an issue of national security. Maybe the British Embassy in US would politely ask one last time to shut those portals down. If not, make British Telecom block all data traffic concerning Niantic games in UK. It is a server based game, no server, no play. I am sure Niantic will react within minutes in this case...
I will pass this along, thank you.
And please tell us why do you need all this? well, there are portals or pokestops on the territory, everyone understands that there is a military base, a fence, barbed wire, a checkpoint, everyone can read, respectively, each player must think about their own safety first of all, in the same way, then you can ask to remove the portals on the pier because you can fall into the water and drown.