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Phantom 'Discoveries'!


Pigling

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Very recently two of my TBs lost several years ago (in Australia & USA) have suddenly been 'discovered'! Not the good news one would texpect it to be.

 

It seems that new members are finding TB codes (as many as 400 at a time) on the Internet (including Facebook) and bulk logging them even though they have never even been within 1,000 miles of them! One miscreant who has been a member for just one year has 'found' 2,000 caches & 'discovered' over 8,000 Trackables! 4 TBs in every cache?!

 

Who publishes these codes? How do they obtain them? What do genuine Geocachers think of this practice?

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Whenever there are big events in Europe, particularly in Germany, The various Slavic countries, or Portugal, I'll get a slew of discovered logs on several of my trackables.

 

Now, since those very items have never left my house, the logs get deleted toot-sweet. And I do not explain why. They know they never saw it/them.

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As virtual discoveries have been frowned on in the past, there is a Facebook page where people post their TB's asking others to be virtually discovered. One guy has a trackable that is his collection book. All trackables in the book are listed on the Collection TB page.

 

I was kind of skeptical at first, but I did log the guy's collection.

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Have you tried contacting the people who have made discoveries and asking them where they get that code from?

 

If you know where it was published, you can at least take some countermeasures, for example if they were published on someone's blog, you can request that they are removed.

It might work, but i'm pessimistic that there will even be a reply.

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This morning I received a discover log for my 2004 USA Geocoin from a user named Trebbi. I deleted the log right away. Then I watched the account to see that he/she discovered over 5900 USA Geocoins today. Logs dated 11/28/2014.

 

Yeah, I also 4 vintage geocoins that Trebbi "discovered". The must be using some sort of software or hacked into GC.com to get all of those numbers. I deleted all the finds as well.

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Those of us that have been around for a while (like the last two posters and myself) know that USA Geocoins were one of the first Geocoins trackable on Geocaching.com. Note the bold, there were many Geocoins in 2004 trackable on their own websites. I don't know about hacking (although it's possible), but my guess is they discovered a vulnerability with a pattern in which the tracking numbers were issued in the olden days.

 

Anyways, good news for you two I suppose, the offending user, from Germany, has gotten their account locked. In other words, a ban from the website, almost surely temporary, for x amount of time. :o

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Why do some users bother to find tb numbers online? I have seen the facebook group and also some links on catchers logs/tb pages.

 

I'm guessing it is just about the numbers.

 

I am anew catcher but at least read the rules, did have a lucky escape when an even newer tracker logged a picture of a TB of mine and posted it with the tracking code. Only a few discovers which were deleted.

 

Personally I enjoy sending them out and watching them travel (I have started collecting some - buy 2 just after pay day, 1 of these gets sent out and I keep the other)

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