Whistle Orga

@PortalMapBot just gives you name and info, probably scraped a list of portals once. @portalAssistbot gives you mods so is pulling things live.

I wish we could prove the scraper. Not just access to a bot that queries a db

We can.

How?

[[Photo]]

We've got the docs where they explain it to their agents

Yes, but I'm talking physical data proof. I'm not really sure if what I'm thinking of exists

But some kind of code to show

Know what I mean?

I don't think we have any way of getting access to the scraper's API

(I know next to nothing about code)

Although we could try to donate enough money to the patreon to demand the API key

That thing. API. Knew I saw a word for it

Lol I'm bluffing too, I don't know things about code. But it sounds right.

That could get ugly

Yeah I don't think it's a road we want to go down

Especially since API key access was listed as "planned" in that doc

I think I'm gonna suggest a ton of changes on this draft post text

I'm still combing the list for names I can add input to

There's a lot of names I know

Lol

Just saw enlightened today

Says not to contact the players place of employment

What I don't know, actually (and maybe @strandit knows) is, what's the opsec on that document -- is it actually widely distributed or is it very high-level?

Hmm, should I screenshot the patreon? They'll pull that down in a heartbeat.

Good idea

Does way back machine have more recordings

Just had a thought

If Nia knows the exact address of the Amazon aws, could they let Amazon know to take down copyrighted materials

What copyrighted material?

Scraped data

There are some other websites they should also be reaching out to if they do that.

Did they manage to get rid of any of the scraped pokemon sites?

Did they ever know exactly where the data was hosted?

I'm just thinking. Waking up one day and all of your database is gone

With all due respect, this is the most frustrating thing I have ever read. With this way of thinking about it, Noone will ever be banned for it. There is a TACIT ACKNOWLGEMENT here of what this is and if your in this slack, what it does.


You aren't just going to be invited into something this big without being vouched for and being part of the system Already.


There will never be more definitive proof that what we have here, and if this is somehow the position that Niantic takes, then there is nothing that will ever be done about this scourge on the game.

But that probably isn't the case seeing they have multiple regions hosting their own stuff

You are basically asking for a video testimonial of each agent saying yes I know I'm using scraping tolls that's what I'm in here for. That will never happen.

Well, we only definitively know that agents are aware of what's going on, unless we've got ss of them actually using it.

I've certainly got access to tools I don't use.

I can prove that Slackfarmer is Niantic Dev if needed. I've got a few sources but my sources would need to be onboarded here.

We haven't come across anything in all this that requires the use of scanner bots, right? It's all just aggregating and archiving the intel map.

We walk into Niantic HQ with all this data, who know what else our whistle Gives us in the interim and say "here you go Niantic, blatant evidence of scraped data being utilized by a large multi country group of some of the highest ranking players of one of the teams in your game" Is there response HONESTLY going to be : "well all of this is circumstantial and could be fake. You could have made all this up, so we are going to do nothing."??

So responses are:
* This database wasn't necessarily created through scraping, maybe people manually added all this info
* ENL do this too

Manually added the date and timestamp a mod was added to a portal?

Literally impossible

Also: if Niantic used the "enl do it too" as a reason not to do anything here, that's blatant negligence

So give me this data on an enl group

Do it. You can't.

And if you do, take them with this group of cheaters and throw them out

ENL do it too. The fact that I'm not in those groups and if I was, there's no way in hell I'd post screenshots here, doesn't mean ENL do not do it.

I think Niantic is in a very tough spot with this. They don’t have enough spine to ban everyone on the list and it would decimate the RES. They have their own employee and “chosen ones” on the list too.


If I had to bet I’d say Niantic does nothing official. Embarrassment and derision might be the only repercussions.

What I am saying is how is that a reasonable answer for lack of movement or response on all this evidence we have here?

Then it promotes the scraping

Nothing will ever happen.

They can't stop the scraping.

Why not do it then

They can remove the incentives like Guardian (which they are working on) but they can't stop the scraping.

I think this is the res motto now

They can at least not sit idly by when evidence like this is dropped in their lap.

☝️☝️


#tos

I added this as a suggestion to the very beginning of the draft post doc:


The Ingress Terms of Service [link] prohibit the use of “automation software, bots, spiders, crawlers, data mining tools, or hacks, tools, agents, engines, or devices of any kind” to “extract, scrape, or index the Services or Content (including information about users or game play)”. Downloading information in bulk from the Ingress scanner or intel map, or ‘scraping’, is a violation of the Ingress Terms of Service.

At some point I posted the text in here of the bullet point right after that too. Like.... What they are doing is just blatantly against TOS

There's no way to dispute that.

You're entitled to this opinion. I'm just making people very aware of what will be said. How do I know this? Because it's what I was told when I asked a Res agent how they came by that info.


Apparently, I have to keep reminding people of this:


It's not what you KNOW, it's what you can PROVE.


There's an attorney in here. Ask her. @AnAmerican_BNA .

Does it make it right? Fuck no

I need to be fair here. I'm furious. All of the people that are two faced to me that my gut TOLD me were two faced are in there. I'm emotionally involved. I want to make sure everyone knows I respect and understand their opinion. @Catw0man1

I'm more hurt than angry.

I have people on that list that I thought were real friends

This is personal for me on many levels.

But if we're going to do this, we need to do it right. We need to be responsive, not reactionary.

That's all I'm saying

This. We desperately need more evidence. Member list is amazing but I can see this totally happening. I know this is a heated conversation but we need more.

Actual results from the tools from our WB would be a good start.

You are absolutely right, and maybe I'm in a position this morning where I didn't sleep at all because of this that makes me emotionally vulnerable on alot of this. I understand where you are coming from, but it doesn't make it less frustrating to know that at this stage it's most likely that nothing will come of this in game

Right now, the best we can hope for with what we have is public outing and embarrassment. I want to be able to use this opportunity to actually effect CHANGE. Trust me when I tell you that most of the names of many on that list won't care that they're outed.

This is why the guardian badge has to go. This systemic cheating is almost entirely due to it.

And that's exactly what I'm hoping we can do. Effect change. In order to do that, we need to approach this as un-emotionally as possible

The fact that we have screenshots of the "radar" channels showing that they monitor/scrape data from SO many regions is what makes me ragey. It's so widespread.

That's a global list of agents. You have almost every continent represented there

The widespread nature of it is really more bothersome to me than the list of specific names.

There's something I can't articulate yet about the notion of "we knew they had a network" etc making the specific names on the list almost irrelevant. Maybe it'll take shape after coffee.

So much this. My locals won't care. They don't deny it when confronted. They redirect.

Shadus brings up SOP. I don't think it's because it's the only tool he knows about. He's smart enough not to show his hand if he knows of other enl tools, but he might in this instance.

It appears our local did show up on the list. We knew he was a scraper but having public proof is very different.

I think a certain segment will be embarrassed to be exposed. Others will play the “you do it too” card.

Realistically I don't think we can expect to get the proof Nadia wants

So we have to limit our claims to what we have evidence of

We can't prove it's scraped data. We can only demonstrate that it looks like a scraper and they say that it's a scraper.

Maybe not, but we have strong evidence that they are flouting TOS

Then how could we ever prove there is ever scraped data

I think it's an important point for the post text

This is one battle in an ongoing war

They are collecting money for the purpose of running servers to scrape data.

They spell it out.

You say, "we believe that this is a scraper because a, b,c"

It sounds the same to most people

But is technically more correct for the res who want to challenge it.

Or you could frame it as "how do we know it's a scraper"

Does anyone have the patreon description handy? I don't