I marked a submission as third party photo because the photo was stolen from the apartment complex’s website. With attention to detail, you can see the same shadows & same cloud formations in the background. But, it appeared on ingress as accepted Wayspot. I have other examples of this, too. I do no…

I too note when a photo is taken from a third-party source, and when descriptions have been just copied and pasted from websites. But, I am not at all confident that Niantic does anything with that information. In fact, I’ve seen a few submissions that I even reported for abuse or fake submissions …

I’m so confused as to why people use 3rd party photos. Inaccurate locations I can just about understand… but using someone elses photos / Stock photos is so easy to spot.

My theory is that they are not actually there to take photos and are submitting remotely.

That I get in that they are submitting remotely… but to use photos that are not their own is what I don’t get. I guess it’s my photographers instinct that’s causing the confusion.

if they truly don’t understand that it is wrong, it can be an easy way to get a good photo without faces. niantic really needs to come down on not allowing submissions with third party photos to remain on the map imo.

Thank you for reporting those. We do take those reports seriously and such behavior is considered abusive and the submitter is subject to enforcement .

Has ML been “trained” to scour online databases for 3pp? Because I still see them in voting…

In my experience, reports for third party photos on live Wayspots are not taken seriously. I’ve reported a couple of Wayspots with third party photos, and in those cases I was told that I should go add a new photo to the Wayspot myself.

You would think it would be a basic task for ML to filter out photos with smaller resolutions than you would expect from any modern cell phone camera. This would get rid of almost all the third party photo submissions

Oh, I found the ticket for one report: Ticket #28441284 [image] [image] [image] [image] The link to the source of the photos is https://www.mihomes.com/new-homes/north-carolina/the-triangle/apex/friendship-station and the portal is still live with that photo because it is not local to me to g…

3rd party photos

Review Support

Topic		Replies	Views
Third party photos should be abuse Review Support	7	553	November 20, 2025
Wayspot not accepted Nomination Support	28	767	November 17, 2025
Policy clarification needed: Third-party photos and Wayspot validity General Discussion	8	181	January 23, 2026
Photo Nomination Rejected - is this considered Copyrighted? Nomination Support	20	381	January 28, 2025
Nomination Rejected as ‘Offensive’ and ‘Photos Taken Elsewhere’ — But They’re Mine General Discussion	27	396	September 29, 2025

3rd party photos

Related topics