- But I also know that rumors and myths abound about who is/isn't "Niantic xyz".

- If only we had someone on the Niantic payroll to dig up that kind of evidence :)

- So I'm just wanting to be sure we can prove anything we claim so it doesn't blow up in our faces

- https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-collins-09626a4

- I don't have that kind of access. :(

- [[Webpage]]https://twitter.com/slackfarmer

- that took like...45 seconds

- I just asked if it can be proven

- My question is both simple and legitimate

- sure. Might be useful to provide some documentation.

- not sure how far down that path we want to go.

- "I mean, can we PROVE that these people actually used the tools to break TOS?"

- etc.

- The tool's existence is is own violation. Why be in there if you're not using it?

- So I don't think that will be an issue

- But if we're going to mention that someone is an actual staff person, we need to be prepared to defend that. Niantic will close ranks....quickly.

- it will certainly be interesting to see what happens

- Seeing that list of names....

You're not wrong.

- There's many that don't surprise me. But others....

- Back to adding notes....

- Ok, I'm sure I missed some, but that was a first pass

- thanks for the good notes on the euros

- There's more in there that I recognize, but I need to dig through chats to find out from where

- Just found another RES Vanguard :( Katvinci

- argentina

- Is there an easier way for me to cross reference that list and my chats?

- A LOT of those names look familiar, but I'm having to search each one

- I...don't think so. You pretty much have to flip back and forth, I think.

- [[☹ Sticker, size 21'244 bytes]]

- I have a list of Vanguards thanks to @deafone , so I just crossed that against the name list

- didn't expect to get another hit

- Ok, then it'll take me some time, but I'll try to pound through it alphabetically

- poor Andrew

- Unfortunately there is more than one name on the Enl side of Vanguard that hunts....

- oh I'm sure

- they just don't have the bad luck to be on a massively well-documented list

- or at least not one that's been released yet.

- Not that we've seen anyway.

- This

- [[Webpage]]https://spairo.org/comms/
surely someone can have some fun with this

- I was wondering what that stood for

- [[Photo]]

- g+ post

- Fine fine

- not yet :)

- But but..

- Daaad

- the picture is starting to come together

- it's going to be lovely

- I've started doing the googling on the undocumented agents.

Krakow, Bombay, the Netherlands, Japan

- Like I said, there's many I recognize

- Just have to sort through

- these guys put together a hell of a tool and network

- gotta hand it to them

- Again, no wonder they don't win more things in the actual game...

- Had to take time to build

- Lot of coder hours, for sure. And some careful consideration on the social engineering / infosec side of things

- found a Hawaiian

- It would be graceless not to acknowledge the depth and complexity of the technical achievement here, even if it is built on sand.

- and the internationalization of it is breathtaking.

- Somewhere there is a list of all the Navarro portals with who made them right? Although maybe it doesn't list the niantic one

- I agree with this. I also think we probably need to explain why it violates tos and what tos means. I've had way too many players try to tell me agents are violating tos by deploying more than one 8 on a portal or doing things that are actually impossible. People don't know the tos.

- Agreed. The ToS is ambiguous in many ways, but it's fairly clear on scraping data.

- We're not actually releasing the notes and aos right? It might reduce some of the moral high ground we have about not autogenerating heatmaps with home locations

- Furthermore, the argument can be made that what we're looking at isn't "exactly" scraped data. What we are seeing is a slack channel that has access to a bot, that has access to a database. No one in that chat can be proven to have scraped. Just that they queried a db. Now, logic would dictate that the db is compiled using scraped data, but the members of that chat can technically say they had no idea how the info arrived, just that they had access. Plausible deniability. Is the reveal still embarrassing? Yes. But unfortunately, being an idiot isn't against ToS.

- I don't think we are, but I wasn't sure.

- Yes. Some of these people have access to a scraper and have said nothing. Some of them queried the scraper and gotten information. Others are more silently complicit, aware this is going on but not using it.

- The only reason why I phrase the defense that way is because that's how it was phrased to me when one of the res on that list pulled a series of my portals.

- Why is this worse than using @PortalAssistBot?

- It seems to be doing the same thing? Or am I mistaken?

- I've never used that bot

- I'm not in Slack. Lol

- @PortalMapBot and @PortalAssistBot are both telegram bots you can query to look up a portal globally by name

- Oh...didn't know that either

- @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

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