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Over the years, I have seen cachers cheat in one way or another or heard other cachers talk about the cheaters. For the most part, I don't care. By cheating, I mean logging caches you did not find. For example, there is one cacher who logged caches in two dozen US states and in Japan in a single day (all virtuals by the way).

 

I know of a reviewer who has been archiving historic virtual caches because of the number of logs by people who clearly did not find the cache and instead found their info on the internet. On the other hand, I have had a few logs deleted because someone decided I wasn't there (and I had to provide photographic evidence that I had, indeed, been there and found the cache). What do you do to combat this? Do we know if Groundspeak does anything about it? Check out GCAF76, GCAF78, and GC5B66 One of these has the cacher who logged in multiple states and in Japan on the same day (12/27/2009).

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They don't cheat at my game, only in theirs. So I take no offences by that behaviour.

 

I simply don't be impressed in other peoples numbers/statistics anymore since I know that there are armchair loggers, throwdown self loggers, multi-loggers, virtual loggers with no real logbook entry for some reason or another ("see it but can't access" - so what? It's not a find & log!) and so on. The find number doesn't proof anything if it's not based by several good caching stories over some mugs of beer...I just believe my own statistics.

 

However, when someone's logging a find on my own hides and does not show in the real logbook, I probably would delete it. Didn't happen yet, as far as I know. But the guidelines encourage me to, and I would assume an error during logging process (wrong GC code?) so I would be happy to provide help to my fellow cacher who somehow accidentally logged it online. :)

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Is there a question here? You are dredging up some couch potato logging that took place almost 4 years ago in an attempt to do what? You ask if Groundspeak does anything about this behavior, yet you link to a cache that was archived by a former Groundspeak lackey because it wasn't being maintained and allowing couch potato logs. Color me puzzled.

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Only a virtual or earth cache can request proof such as photo's or other info that can only be provided be visiting the location. If that's happening with normal caches you can contact Groundspeak, and as long as you have signed the log you will have it re-instated.

 

As for myself-I like to keep decent cache pages. If you're just going to log something stupid like "g" or you admit you didn't sign the log I will delete it. And yes I have logs such as those. I'm not so concerned about cheaters, I just prefer to keep my cache page free from such, obviously false logs.

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I know of a reviewer who has been archiving historic virtual caches because of the number of logs by people who clearly did not find the cache and instead found their info on the internet.

Just one example of how cheating affects other geocachers.

From what you've described, the caches weren't archived because of cheating, they were archived because the CO didn't deal with the cheating.

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I know of a reviewer who has been archiving historic virtual caches because of the number of logs by people who clearly did not find the cache and instead found their info on the internet.

Just one example of how cheating affects other geocachers.

From what you've described, the caches weren't archived because of cheating, they were archived because the CO didn't deal with the cheating.

 

True, but if cheaters weren't out there then there would be no issue.

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I know of a reviewer who has been archiving historic virtual caches because of the number of logs by people who clearly did not find the cache and instead found their info on the internet.

 

Just one example of how cheating affects other geocachers.

 

Assuming people aren't logging dozens of caches all over the world on the same day it's hard to see how anyone can know whether the information was found by visiting the site or a few minutes with Google.

 

Since nobody has invented a personal teleporter it's pretty obvious what's happening if someone is apparently finding caches all across Europe, the US, Asia etc all in the same day but if you get the text from a memorial how can anyone tell whether you stood by the memorial, had a friend take a picture of the memorial so you could log it later, or jumped on Street View and zoomed in on the memorial?

 

Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

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True, but if cheaters weren't out there then there would be no issue.

If cheaters weren't out there, we wouldn't need the mechanisms available to a CO to thwart cheating. Cheaters are out there: that's not a variable subject to change.

 

Assuming people aren't logging dozens of caches all over the world on the same day it's hard to see how anyone can know whether the information was found by visiting the site or a few minutes with Google.

Well, first of all, I suspect a big element of the problem is, in fact, people logging caches all over the world, so for that case a suspicious CO can detect the cheat.

 

But a CO truly concerned about such things can require information or a picture that's only available at the site and unlikely to be available incidentally in other people's pictures or through street view. While that's not iron clad, it would tend to make faking the find not worth the trouble. In particular, requiring "a few minutes with Google" is probably enough of a barrier to prevent most if not all cheating. And, frankly, if it's so important to someone that they are willing to go to that much trouble, I'm not really too concerned about them getting undeserved credit.

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My biggest issue with these behaviors is that false logging can create an impression that a cache is present when it may, in fact, be missing. A cache with a long string of DNFs is a red flag, but if the last log says it was Found it can either delay the owner from performing maintenance or cause other cachers to waste time searching for it.

 

The archival of Virtuals is my second issue with this behavior.

 

As long as you aren't wrecking it for other people I don't typically care what you do.

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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

Edited by tisourway
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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

They would know it's truly you...until someone else tattooed the logo on their thumb. How about this alternative: Take a "selfie" picture.

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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

They would know it's truly you...until someone else tattooed the logo on their thumb. How about this alternative: Take a "selfie" picture.

 

Even better, you could just have a piece of paper with your name on it along with the date in the picture somewhere. Takes just moments to do it.

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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

They would know it's truly you...until someone else tattooed the logo on their thumb. How about this alternative: Take a "selfie" picture.

 

Even better, you could just have a piece of paper with your name on it along with the date in the picture somewhere. Takes just moments to do it.

 

I have to say that I do care.... not about taking a pic of every find, that's silly. But of people who are cheating, or making "mistakes". I know some are unintentional... a CO contacted me once about my log that said I couldn't find a cache, when I logged a smilie. Hey, it happens.

 

Sure it doesn't hurt me if someone cheats... But yes, I don't like it. It bothers me to visit a cache with whatever... say 8 found logs, but only 5 or 6 signatures. It bothers me to find a cache after a couple of DNFs only to see someone else log a find online, and date it prior to my log.

 

I'm proud of what I do, and some caches require quite a bit of effort (for me), so when someone else claims the same prize or smilie without doing the work... yeah, it bothers me too.

 

Just saying.

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Require a picture-no.

Require an answer to a question that can only be found on site-yes. That is what a Virtual CO should do.

Yes!

 

The picture thing is silly, I often just take a picture of myself with the GPS on my head and my face isnt showing.

 

At every earthcache and virtual, I take a self picture to prove the CO wrong if they assume that I armchair their caches.

 

There was one virtual I did and the answer was dead wrong. The CO let my log stand because I did the virtual. I asked if he want me to send him a picture of me at GZ and he said no.

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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

They would know it's truly you...until someone else tattooed the logo on their thumb. How about this alternative: Take a "selfie" picture.

 

Even better, you could just have a piece of paper with your name on it along with the date in the picture somewhere. Takes just moments to do it.

 

Takes just moments to fiddle it with Photoshop as well.

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Even pictures rarely prove anything - most of the time I cache by myself so the best I can usually do is a picture of my GPS in front of something rather than a picture of me, in which case nobody could prove one way or the other whether it was my GPS or someone else's picture, or whether I'd taken a stock picture and photoshopped a GPS into it.

You could tattoo the GoundSpeak logo on your thumb, that way when you take a picture of your GPS then they would know it's truly you.

They would know it's truly you...until someone else tattooed the logo on their thumb. How about this alternative: Take a "selfie" picture.

 

Taking a selfie is difficult when I often don't carry a camera at all and when I do it's a bulky DSLR. Taking a selfie with something like that is nigh on impossible. I'll take a picture of my GPS in the appropriate area to prove I was there (or maybe take a picture using my GPS that's geotagged) but none of that is anything I couldn't have cobbled together in a couple of minutes with some photoshop trickery.

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I wish people would stop calling it "cheating". The term has always bugged me because it carries with it the idea that geocaching and your find total is a competition. Someone that is fake logging caches now has more finds than I do, so they're winning, those cheaters!

 

I'm like most in that I really don't care about someone pretending to cache...I just dislike the baggage that comes with the word "cheating".

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What I find fascinating, especially on vacation locations where we prepare more thoroughly than for the average weekend cache outing: cache has accumulated several NFs. Reviewer posts a note asking if everything is right, some cacher logs a found even though it's pretty clear the cache is gone. I mean: why? <_<

 

Mrs. terratin

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One of the posters asked if Groundspeak could/does help- im guessing they don't care. Member of my caching circle has clear evidence of some elaborate cheating- using a stamp- having others add their signature when they log and then send an email with all caching details so they could write their own personal logs- Groundspeak just essentially shrugged and said they are only hurting themselves.

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One of the posters asked if Groundspeak could/does help- im guessing they don't care. Member of my caching circle has clear evidence of some elaborate cheating- using a stamp- having others add their signature when they log and then send an email with all caching details so they could write their own personal logs- Groundspeak just essentially shrugged and said they are only hurting themselves.

 

Which actually raises an interesting question - for me at least.

 

I can fully understand why Groundspeak don't want to and in fact don't have the resources to get into any form of log auditing or cheat control and I expect that if they did, annual memberships would have to increase a heck of a lot to pay for the resources which would be required.

 

And yet, if a CO deletes a log and the logger subsequently complains to GS - often the log will be reinstated.

 

Is it just me or is this equation somewhat one-sided i.e. get involved when it suits us, but not when it doesn't? :huh:

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>As long as you aren't wrecking it for other people I don't typically care what you do.

 

the issue is : if too many people cheat too much, it gets the standard,

and no one thinks it is cool or funny to play fair anymore,

and no one expect anyone to play fair by the rules.

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Isn't that where we are now? This caching streak/icon challenge has sparked that for many of the less competitive folk- another member of my caching circle got flat out confirmation of this- got an email from some traveling rvers stating that they would be logging a series of caches they had found of hers one by one as they wanted the 31 day icons- justifying it with the assurance that they had found and logged each of these caches- just not on the dates they were logging.

And these are just two examples that I know of. I'm sure we can all cite more.

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>As long as you aren't wrecking it for other people I don't typically care what you do.

 

the issue is : if too many people cheat too much, it gets the standard,

and no one thinks it is cool or funny to play fair anymore,

and no one expect anyone to play fair by the rules.

ditto - well said...

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the issue is : if too many people cheat too much, it gets the standard,

and no one thinks it is cool or funny to play fair anymore,

and no one expect anyone to play fair by the rules.

I think most people understand that the rules are what make it fun. Geocaching is trivial if you cheat, so I expect most cheaters will tend to get bored after they've "found" enough caches and move on.

 

At any rate, I'm willing to risk it. I've never seen anyone (seriously) post "it's cool to cheat!", so I'm not worried about it becoming the standard.

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I don't really understand why anyone cares either.

 

One person already mentioned it, literally the ONLY downside to "cheaters" is when they post "Found It" for caches that are not there, and cause you to waste time looking for them when you otherwise would have skipped it due to all the other DNFs (although, let's be honest, some of us still go look for caches that have many DNFs just because "it's close" and "hey, maybe I'll be the one to find it", etc. lol)

 

I also think it's stupid to shut down virtuals due to "armchair logging". People posting that they "Found It" when they haven't doesn't really affect anyone else for those kind of caches, so who cares?

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the issue is : if too many people cheat too much, it gets the standard,

and no one thinks it is cool or funny to play fair anymore,

and no one expect anyone to play fair by the rules.

 

Yes, this can happen to traditions.

Edited by -CJ-
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