Maybe They'll Give You an Invisibility Cloak for Your Smartphone
November 8, 2017 7:20 PM   Subscribe

Mobile game developer Niantic has conjured up another massively popular franchise to turn into a location-aware mobile game, announcing that they are working on Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

However, both their existing games, Pokemon GO and Ingress, have been troubled by cheaters and stalkers who use sophisticated automated tools to gain advantage over legitimate players. Niantic has stated that they will take action to enforce their Terms of Service but will this be enough to mitigate the privacy risks?
posted by radwolf76 (40 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
and then of course there's the Hanke/In-Q-Tel connection

accio user data!
posted by halation at 7:31 PM on November 8, 2017 [7 favorites]


I can’t begin to describe how loudly I screamed when I saw this article whilst at work today

I lost my everloving mind

You can have all my data Niantic

I don’t care

Sell it, clone it, give it to China to use when they make first contact

Just give me this game and an interactive wand to go with it ASAP

I am yours
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:56 PM on November 8, 2017 [23 favorites]


I can’t begin to describe how loudly I screamed when I saw this article whilst at work today
...
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:56 PM on November 8


Really? I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested in that sort of thing...
posted by cirhosis at 9:09 PM on November 8, 2017 [23 favorites]


I am also excited. Pokémon GO has been fun, but I was never into the Pokémon franchise so I don't have much connection to it. Harry Potter, on the other hand...

I hope there's lots of spell-learning and potion-making and magic joke shops, and not just fights between magical creatures and dark wizards. It's okay if it's kind of a grind like Pokémon GO, as long as it's amusing to play casually, and doesn't overemphasize the player-vs-player (or team-vs-team) combat.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:25 PM on November 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


I occasionally wonder if Niantic has *any* developers that understand security, because Pokemon was being actively cheated almost from the get-go. It's like they built it to be hacked or something.
posted by aramaic at 10:20 PM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]


...and doesn't overemphasize the player-vs-player (or team-vs-team) combat.

I'm an Ingress player and considering that the age group this is targeting, as opposed to Ingress which is almost exclusively played by 30+ year old nerds in my town, I'm pretty sure this will be the case.
posted by PenDevil at 10:51 PM on November 8, 2017 [3 favorites]


I’m a relatively new Ingress addict (L9.5, enlightenment) - what data do they have about us? Location, name, address, purchases... I think google has been tracking this shit forever. What am I missing?
posted by bendy at 1:20 AM on November 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


bendy: Most of the drama is around players collating data that the app makes public, eg [username] was at [location] at [time] and performed [action]. The same stuff you see in the app, but collected so they can perform queries over it (eg "what's the first portal [username] hits in the morning" would give you a feel for where they live). The only additional piece of information they've dug out of the system, as far as I can tell, is a unique ID that identifies players across username changes (maybe associated with their phone, or their Google account?)
posted by Leon at 3:39 AM on November 9, 2017


In addition to what Leon mentioned, players are going one step beyond collecting the messages that Ingress actively broadcasts on its in-game COMM channel. From what I've seen described of the one tool that was leaked (and you can be sure that there's quite a few more similar tools out there whose existence hasn't been leaked yet), their network of bots monitors and logs the status of every portal in the game, so that even player actions that were nominally considered "silent" because they had no COMM broadcast, such as upgrading a resonator or installing a mod would also get logged into the tracking database.

It's one thing to let Niantic know and track your location every time you open the game, as that's a fundamental requirement of an interactive location-aware game. But when third-parties set up their own shadowy copies of that location information by scraping the game for any mark any player makes on the game world, no matter how small? Unlike Niantic, who has a privacy policy drafted by their legal department and a vested interest in not getting slapped by any regulatory enforcement that would affect the company's profits, these third-party data miners have no guidelines other than make sure they get theirs, and fuck the other team over however you want.

The Unique ID mentioned is simply a Database GUID assigned by Niantic when an account is opened. Years ago, this information could be learned by data scraping the game's web-based Intel Map, but now to get it, it takes a special bot account that connects to their servers the way the game app does.
posted by radwolf76 at 4:39 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


ENL FOR LIFE. PRAISE THE SHAPERS!!!
posted by josher71 at 6:23 AM on November 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


Why would people join the Enlightened? They want to enslave humanity.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:33 AM on November 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why would people join the Resistance? They're the ones who heard "We're from the Government, we're here to help," and replied with "Golly gee whiz! Can we help too?"

Besides, it's the blue side that wants to enslave humanity. The greens are the ones who want to help aliens eat everyone's brains.
posted by radwolf76 at 6:49 AM on November 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Why would people join the Enlightened? They want to enslave humanity.

That kind of Resistance propaganda is exactly what I would expect from a Smurf!

More seriously, if there's combat, I hope it's not as awful as the swipefest that PoGo offers.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:49 AM on November 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm actually kinda fascinated that *this* was the topic used to put the announcement on the FP. Cause when I heard the Announcement, I figured the topic was going to be "But Pokemon is still a garbage fire"
I was in the Beta for it, I was refreshing to see how far in to July 5th I would have to wait to actually sign up. I've probably played the game for as long as I've been actively able to. It is pure *excrement* of a game. There are SO FEWER THINGS to do in that game compared to Ingress, it's almost laughable. If you're not in a Major City, if you're not in The Literal College Town, you might as well be in the middle of Montana. Basic things from Actual Pokemon Games, that were so obvious to include that they're in the Announcement Trailer, aren't even close to being implemented. Is the reason why I can't give my extra Jynx to my friend because of Security Flaws inherent in Ingress? Sure, Maybe. But then that just means Niantic has Two games with a range of Broken-ness, and they want to make a third? Send me a message when they've used all of the money they made from being The Most Popular Game Ever on something worthwhile.
posted by WeX Majors at 6:57 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Yeah, when Niantic mentioned they were working on a third game, PoGo players were like WTF, could you finish this one? Or at least get it out of Beta?

Did a PoGo Raid this morning, all the iphones kept crashing out, 'causing all the eager taping on the screen to come to naught. One could go on with the number of problems with the App, it's unreal.Combine that with Niantic's inability to communicate and this just doesn't sound very promising for the end users. But it'll make a ton of money, I'm sure.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:13 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sweet baby JESUS NO. Potterfen have enough problems with "Well, only Gryffindors are good so everyone else is evil or stupid" and "I"m an edgelord Slytherin so I get to be an asshole!" lets not throw real life locations where you actually interact with people into that mix, games with strong factioning (World of Warcraft for example) ALREADY create real life bullying, why are they going to make it WORSE?
posted by FritoKAL at 7:26 AM on November 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


I used to be a super intense Ingress player. I finally wandered off playing when I watched my home town for a week and found a 10:1 ratio of active accounts to actual players. I got sick and tired of being (apparently) the only player in a ten mile radius with only one account and no GPS spoofing app.

I am... skeptical that an HP game would be any less plagued with that sort of thing. Especially as all of the methods of getting past Niantic's ability to stop cheating have been thoroughly stress-tested now. At least with Ingress there was a learning curve while the cheaters got up to speed.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:57 AM on November 9, 2017


Potterfen have enough problems with "Well, only Gryffindors are good so everyone else is evil or stupid"...

In PoGO it was common for people to become attached to the Gym near their house or work and defend it like crazy or for teams to have territories. That's probably going to be amplified for HP, with some negative local blow back.

Locally, the PoGO players have come to know each other, and the gym change and Raiding has fostered more of a friendly competition, but geeeze. An influx of new people without that history could be really interesting, to say the least.

And the dynamics of people who spoof vs those who don't is just powderkeg waiting to happen. Throw kids and kids' parents in the mix and jeeze...I just might go read a book or something.

I wonder when a Star Wars AR game will drop, lol
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:23 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I mean, there was a sudden influx of PoGoers who hadn't played Ingress (I'd wager 95+% TBH) so I don't think this will be too much different. If anything, given the overlap between Pokemon and Harry Potter fandom, it should be better.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:16 AM on November 9, 2017


Something positive happened locally in the world of Ingress last week! Amazing but true.

A BAF was made using a portal closed for the winter, it's on the other side of a canyon accessible only by gondola, so it's out of play all winter, it will be a huge pain in the ass for res all winter.

Anyway a spoofer took it down and EVERYONE res and enl petitioned hard for it to be reinstated as green. Which Niantic did, miracle of miracles.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:16 AM on November 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


Oh, and the thing that hasn't been observed in any of the bigger publications about the Resistance cheating scandal is that none of the RIOT tools (software package of data scraping tools) can't really be used for anything else other than griefing opposing players and providing a finely grained travel tracker of real world locations, finely enough that home or work locations can be determined, they provide no significant advantage to actually winning the game. As much as the concept of winning in Ingress is pretty vague and nebulous.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:23 AM on November 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


Now we'll have three different groups hanging around random landmarks in the Outside World.

Wayne approaches the knot of people, clustered around a pho shop. "You here for the Pokemon raid?" he asks, holding up his scanner.
"No, we're fighting off the Enlightened to preserve this field! It covers nearly all of the state!"
A third person tentatively approaches Wayne.
"Are you Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff?"
posted by spinifex23 at 10:11 AM on November 9, 2017 [7 favorites]


can't really be used for anything else other than griefing opposing players

I heard reports that RIOT data was used to report spoofers on occasion.


they provide no significant advantage to actually winning the game

The automatic notifications when long links were thrown or certain mods were installed on portals could make it easier to disrupt fielding operations in the window of time between the start of the operation and the scoring checkpoint, but I think most serious fielding teams on both sides were already keeping silent when traveling to field anchors, and waiting to the last minute to clear lanes and throw their links, automated tools or not.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:18 AM on November 9, 2017


I'm really interested in this. Hope the app isn't as power hungry and slow as PoGo is. by the time i get it open, and it downloads whatever it is it needs, the impulse to do anything in it or the location I opened it in is has passed.
posted by dreamling at 12:33 PM on November 9, 2017


Ingress--yes thank you. This feels like an annoying dilution of resources from that independent, less commercial world.
posted by MidStream at 12:55 PM on November 9, 2017


I used to love Ingress. Until I was literally stalked to the point of needing to go to the police. My stalker would contact me ANY time I took action on ANY portal, no matter where I was, no matter what time of the day or night. Blowing up a portal at 4AM in Chicago? He'd demand to know why I was in Chicago. Capping a portal in Windsor at midnight? He'd ask me why I was traveling to Canada. He followed me around town and made comments in the COMM about what I was wearing or who I was with. The last straw came when he asked me about some work that was being done on my house. He had followed me home.

Sent a copy of the police report to Niantic. They let my stalker switch user names. Unsurprisingly, he's on the list of The Broker's Guild cheaters. Niantic doesn't care. I stopped playing more than super casually over a year ago. Every couple months or so, I empty out my red capsules and go on a Jarvising spree, but that's it.

I switched to P:GO, and find it much more relaxing. I don't participate in raids or gym battles, I just catch monsters. No stalkers that way. Perhaps I'll play the Potter game if I can play similarly un-stalked.
posted by MissySedai at 12:59 PM on November 9, 2017 [5 favorites]


My edit window passed but of course I meant 'Ingress, no thank you' for this development. What a ruination.
posted by MidStream at 1:05 PM on November 9, 2017


Until I was literally stalked to the point of needing to go to the police.

Yeah, I've had a couple icky messages from a smurf in my neighborhood. My house is a portal and me and a high-level friend made it super strong. He ADA'd it and sent me a private message "Welcome to the neighborhood." When I got home that night to Jarvis it there was a guy in a dark hoodie standing on the corner smoking.

Another morning I woke up to a message from him that said "You were out late last night [hacking] I hope you had a blast!"

I finally messaged him and said "Are you trying to be creepy? Because that's how you're coming across." Haven't heard from his since.

I go out hacking late at night a lot but if I see a smurf attacking a portal near me I turn around and walk the other way.
posted by bendy at 2:52 PM on November 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


I play Pokemon Go and I think this sounds really fun. I've been debating the minutia of Harry Potter for the last four years with my kid, maybe all that knowledge will come in handy finally. I wonder if players will be in different wizarding schools or if we'll be limited to Hogwarts houses. It would be neat to be Ravenclaw, but Thunderbird is intriguing.
posted by Margalo Epps at 5:01 PM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll always be sad that Pottermore never quiiiiite pulled it off. You could have been cool, damnit. (At the very least I wish they'd kept the silly, kludgy initial version, rather than transform into the gameless Refinery29-style thing they've become.)
posted by halation at 5:35 PM on November 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Well, as someone who got into Ingress once I'd heard through word of mouth how much fun Pokémon Go is, I'm looking forward to welcoming a new batch of Ingress players who hear about it via Harry Potter, but decide that they prefer something a bit more mature.
posted by Metro Gnome at 7:53 PM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Ooh, fresh Ingress tears. /collects jars
posted by obiwanwasabi at 8:26 PM on November 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Have played PoGo, just started playing Ingress. Is is just me or is Ingress much better thought out than PoGo?

Yeah, I realize it's total creative control vs licensing a well known property, but the difference in game play is startling.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:29 AM on November 10, 2017


My guess is that Nintendo are a significant block in putting any kind of PvP combat or communication in PoGo.
posted by PenDevil at 8:03 AM on November 10, 2017


Mostly likely, but what a shame.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:12 AM on November 10, 2017


Have played PoGo, just started playing Ingress. Is is just me or is Ingress much better thought out than PoGo?

Well, Ingress had several more years of development time, during which a lot of changes were made. But I suspect a big difference is the existence of in-game communication channels in Ingress and the lack in PoGo. That makes it much more of a team experience which benefits the game quite a bit and also invites factionalism, abuse, and stalking (see above) which harms the game quite a bit. I expect that Niantic took a look at Ingress and any other MMORPG with a community function, calculated the disaster taking that bullying into meatspace and to a much younger demographic and went with a great big NOPE.

Harry Potter is going to have the same problem - any tool to co-ordinate players in game will rapidly be turned into a tool for bullying, but the lack of a way to co-ordinate will severely diminish the community aspect of the game. The sort of abuse rampant abuse seen in online is an even worse PR disaster when moved IRL and involves a media property marketed to children.

Ingress was (at first) 18+ and didn't have a history already linked to moral panics (Pokemon = gambling, HP = satanism).
posted by Karmakaze at 11:59 AM on November 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


I’ve never played Pokemon Go and know nothing about Pokemon so take this with a grain of salt. Ingress is simple, enlightenment against resistance.

The communication channels on Ingress are great - I’m going to nearby “hacky hours” every week or so - and I have a good resource for all kinds of questions and spare resonators and weapons.
posted by bendy at 10:38 PM on November 12, 2017


The large corporate properties probably don't want to take the slightest chance of something creepy happening with kids. Hell, PoGO has the Pokemon Trainer Accounts for kids, which don't show sponsored gyms in the game, for legal reasons. It can get sticky and complicated.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:37 AM on November 13, 2017


Yeah, COMM is very handy for connecting. I've gone to some amazing events and meetups myself. It's also great for a player in the other faction to make an alt and come into your faction comm with stalkery screeds about how each of you are fat and ugly and btw you shouldn't park downtown at night don't you know there are creepers there. Or someone uses the location function of COMM to turn up as you deploy and yell "Where's your [obscenity deleted] wife?" out a car window while snapping photos. (That one was someone on my own faction, and we could not make him understand why it was not ok.) Niantic's response to reporting abuse is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "if you feel unsafe, call your local police." I find that extra useless as one of the major local offenders is the local police. (Nothing like seeing your local portal staked out by a town police cruiser to make a person feel super safe.)

This is my point. The sort of bonding you get by having easy communication, especially location targeted communication, makes it super easy to find other players and build a real sense of community. This is good, and the lack of that is one of the reasons why PoGo is failing and why I think HP will have similar problems forming dedicated player groups.

Easy communication, especially location targeted communication, also gives creepers and worse a really efficient tool to find and abuse members of "enemy" groups and justify it because they deserve it for having chosen a different team. This is fraught enough for a community which started out self-limited as an invite-only game for adults who had access to recent Android builds (Ingress was Android only and 18+ while it was building its base). Now consider that factionalism applied to a community that's already strongly factionalized and involves a younger demographic. Then add the moral panic already existing around Pokemon and Harry Potter.

I just don't see a way to make location based community tools on a global scale for a kid's franchise that isn't asking for trouble.
posted by Karmakaze at 6:59 AM on November 13, 2017


More than likely there's a way to really minimize the possibility of stalking, but no one, understandably, wants to take that risk. A single "mild"incident would be enough to generate all sorts of bad publicity and possible lawsuits.

And frankly, at this point in our knowledge of how people act on the internet, there's little reason to encourage people to communicate. Too much bad stuff happens, too easily.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:08 AM on November 13, 2017


« Older “It’s a spectacular find.”   |   Wanda the Movie and the True Crime that Inspired... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments