Pokemon Go Players Are Vandalizing Real Maps With Fake Data To Catch Rare Pokemon (404media.co) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Pokemon Go players are creating a headache for members of the open source map tool OpenStreetMaps by adding fake beaches where they don't exist in hopes of more easily catching Wigletts, a Pokemon that only spawns on beaches. OpenStreetMaps is a free, open source map tool much like Google or Apple maps, but is maintained by a self-governing community of volunteers where anyone is welcome to contribute. An April 27 thread in the OpenStreetMap community forum first spotted the issue, flagging two users in Italy who began marking beaches in all sorts of locations where they don't actually exist.
The OpenStreetMap user who noticed the fictitious beaches immediately connected the dots: Pokemon Go, the mega popular mobile game where players catch Pokemon and can engage in different activities depending on their geolocation, introduced different "biomes" like beach, city, forest, and mountains. Each of these have a different look, and critically, some specific Pokemon will only spawn at specific biomes. Wiglett, for example, only spawns at beaches. Some video game sites quickly noticed that Pokemon Go's beaches were appearing in real world locations like golf courses, sports fields, and other places that are not real beaches. Pokemon Go uses OpenStreetMap for its map data, and is how the game knows players are near certain points of interest.
The OpenStreetMap user created a filter of OpenStreetMap that surfaced instances where "new mappers" added beaches to the map, revealing a number of clearly fake submissions. [...] It's not clear how often Pokemon Go updates the game with data from OpenStreetMaps, but in theory the people who are manipulating the data would have easier access to the beach biome the next time it does. The OpenStreetMap thread goes on to identify one repeat offender who added dozens of fake beaches. Some are near bodies of water, like lakes, rivers, or docks, and others are landlocked schools, parking lots, and random strips of land. If there was any doubt that some of these changes are being made by Pokemon Go players, the same repeat offender also marked the map with his handle, as well as a poke ball.
The OpenStreetMap user who noticed the fictitious beaches immediately connected the dots: Pokemon Go, the mega popular mobile game where players catch Pokemon and can engage in different activities depending on their geolocation, introduced different "biomes" like beach, city, forest, and mountains. Each of these have a different look, and critically, some specific Pokemon will only spawn at specific biomes. Wiglett, for example, only spawns at beaches. Some video game sites quickly noticed that Pokemon Go's beaches were appearing in real world locations like golf courses, sports fields, and other places that are not real beaches. Pokemon Go uses OpenStreetMap for its map data, and is how the game knows players are near certain points of interest.
The OpenStreetMap user created a filter of OpenStreetMap that surfaced instances where "new mappers" added beaches to the map, revealing a number of clearly fake submissions. [...] It's not clear how often Pokemon Go updates the game with data from OpenStreetMaps, but in theory the people who are manipulating the data would have easier access to the beach biome the next time it does. The OpenStreetMap thread goes on to identify one repeat offender who added dozens of fake beaches. Some are near bodies of water, like lakes, rivers, or docks, and others are landlocked schools, parking lots, and random strips of land. If there was any doubt that some of these changes are being made by Pokemon Go players, the same repeat offender also marked the map with his handle, as well as a poke ball.
Re:Vandalism (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: Vandalism (Score:2)
definitions of vandalism involve there not being a motive beyond the defacement itself.
Grafitti is vandalism. And often there is plenty of motivation behind it. Reputational (name recognition) or delimiting teritorial boundaries for profitable (and often illegal) enterprises.
Just because you don't recognize the economics of a particular market doesn't mean that they don't exist. You don't think there might be some value in establishing a rep as a great Pokeman hunter?
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Grafitti is vandalism. And often there is plenty of motivation behind it. Reputational (name recognition) or delimiting teritorial boundaries for profitable (and often illegal) enterprises.
Yes, and graffiti alone would fall under the stricter definition I was quoting. Not all graffiti artists are in it for more than the art. As such, the intent behind it would determine whether it fit under the stricter definition.
Just because you don't recognize the economics of a particular market doesn't mean that they don't exist. You don't think there might be some value in establishing a rep as a great Pokeman hunter?
That is rather part of the point here. Some people think there is motive in doing that, I would agree, and the act of there being a motive removes it from being purely vandalism under the stricter definition. However, I did point out that I wasn't saying that stricter definition was
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Re:Vandalism (Score:4, Insightful)
This is public endangerment, worse than just vandalism.
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Ok, it's a beach. But next it may be fake police stations or emergency service areas; or fake gas stations (or charge stations) stranding people with no place to fill up and not enough range to find a real station.
1. What makes you think this isn't going on already?
2. That happened years ago on Waze (misdirecting traffic).
3. Gotta catch 'em all !!
I guess be thankful AIs are not munging up the maps. Yet.
This all just shows that you can't ever rely on publicly editable information. Someone actually needs to own and control it. Sorry, hippies! :)
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No, its not vandalism. There is a clear purpose for what they are doing.
how is purpose relevant? providing false information is defined as vandalism in most public information systems. it's actually an old and recurrent problem which is why they have rules, protocols and resources in place to specifically fight vandalism. in the case of the openstreetmap foundation: https://osmfoundation.org/wiki... [osmfoundation.org]
and this is nothing new. doing it for pokémon is (is it?). that's an extra bit of information that might change how this issue is understood or dealt with, but the basic process
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Having Open Street Maps contributors get tired of your bullshit and leave it for the trolls sounds like it wouldn't be harmless at all. And just because it's light fraud and cheating, doesn't mean it can't also be vandalism.
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This is why we can't have nice things - there are enough people that will just game everything with no regard to anyone else.
Re: Vandalism (Score:2)
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You'd think such an easily proven statement would gain traction, but yet, we still can't agree, as a society, that this is not to the benefit of society.
Sue him for damages (Score:4, Interesting)
So they should try to catch these people and sue them for damages. At a rate of $100 per hour for fixing the damage they caused. Once the first Pokemon player gets a 5,000 dollar or euro fine, that kind of vandalism will stop.
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Are you sure you want to open the door to suing people contributing to open projects?
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Generally there's a difference between contribution and vandalism.
Now, maybe it was harmless - or maybe it leads to real damages (e.g., someone packs up their family and heads off to the fictional beach)
Given how unhinged some people are, it could even result in fatalities if someone went there expecting a beach then finds people telling them there's no beach and it's just a video game.
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Generally there's a difference between contribution and vandalism.
Unfortunately, when you sue, people must use the extremely costly option of trying to prove that in court.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, once a precedent is set for someone (anyone) having to pay $$ for their submission to open projects, you can cue the lawyers in corporations (whose *only* job is to identify legal risks in the company) to forbid anyone in the company to submit anything to open projects without approval. Next, cue bounty hunters who will scour open project submissions for
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Genies don't come in boxes. ;-)
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Yes, Just like I want penalties for Jia Tan's 'contribution' to the XZ project.
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Since Jia Tan the person (or people) behind the Jia Tan identity probably live(s) in Russia, Iran or Israel (most probably Russia) I don't think those penalties are going to be collected.
Re:Sue him for damages (Score:4, Insightful)
They are not contributing. They are vandalising. They are causing damage to a project that we all can benefit from without paying. It's not contributing, just like taking money out of a collection for starving children is not contributing.
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And they are doing it on purpose - not by accident.
If done accidentally / unintentionally, I think they will not have to be concerned about punishments.
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What will get it to stop is if such games don't use a map their users can edit and feel a need to . Alternatively, there's 100x more Pokemon Go players as Open Street Maps contributors, and this could be an opportunity to start mapping "micro beaches" or other such features, if people on the verification team don't flee in horror.
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What will get it to stop is if such games don't use a map their users can edit and feel a need to .
Sure, but that would necessitate spending more money.
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Re: But why? (Score:2)
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Unfortunately the altitude of a beach is fairly easy to work out, although you may have to take tides into account in some locations.
Linking a game to real life (Score:2)
When you link a game to real life, some people will try to game it in real life! Is anyone surprised?
It is not even new, there are already places that attracts customer by advertising as a good location for catching pokemon. We are lucky that we do not yet have pedos/kidnappers trying to lure kids using the same strategy (or maybe it had already happened but we just didn't hear about it).
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Nothing new for this specific pokemon game. Remember in its early days when flash mobs would cause all kinds of problems when word got out that certain location is a rare pokemon spawn?
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Is being surprised required for reading/writing news articles?
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Is being surprised required for reading/writing news articles?
Yes, otherwise how is "business as usual" being newsworthy?
Blame Niantic (Score:2)
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Seems like a lot of effort (Score:2)
Assuming someone was into this shitty game and wanted to cheat then it would seem easier to just run a fake GPS app, or install the game in an emulator where fake GPS data can be fed in from debug tools.
Re: Seems like a lot of effort (Score:2)
That is not an easy task, Pokemon GO makes a lot of effort to identify and block the players running the game in an emulator or with fake GPS. Players doing that risk a permanent ban.
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The same could be said for putting fake beaches into map data. Probably more so because if this company visualized where people "found" their pokemons on a map then people faking map data would stick out like a sore thumb. e.g. if they are supposed to be a beach and there will be a bunch of dots on maps that are conspicuously nowhere near beaches - welcome to banheim.
As for GPS, I expect their main method of catching people using fake GPS is them traveling improbable distances or warping around. If the fake
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If they already had a map source that wasn't susceptible to vandalism, why wouldn't they just use that for the game?
This (Score:1)
joke on them (Score:3)
All this effort is futile. While is true Pokemon Go uses data from OSM, they do a bad job with that: data is synced once every few years, so people vandalizing OSM for beach biomes may see the effect 2-3 years from now and most likely that pokemon will be made available until then in a different way.
Fight fire with fire (Score:2)
It's the Tragedy of the Commons (Score:2)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Turnabout is fair play (Score:1)