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Simrebel

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I keep receiving notifications in project-gc.com that I am both receiving a favorite point and that a favorite point is being removed simultaneously.  The user is listed as §OPTOUT§4095§ which seems like some sort of bot.  Can anyone explain why a bot would give and remove favorite points.  Why would it even "care"???

Capture.PNG

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I don't think the above answer is correct. Over the last few days, I've received about 8 of these favorite point changes. I checked every one of those caches and have found that a cacher that started in 2002 has changed his caching name. His new name is one of the favorites on every one of those caches. So, I believe the favorite point is taken away under the old caching name, and reapplied under the new caching name. Could this be true?

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26 minutes ago, SerenityNow said:

I don't think the above answer is correct. Over the last few days, I've received about 8 of these favorite point changes. I checked every one of those caches and have found that a cacher that started in 2002 has changed his caching name. His new name is one of the favorites on every one of those caches. So, I believe the favorite point is taken away under the old caching name, and reapplied under the new caching name. Could this be true?

Changing the name on an account wouldn't require the points to be removed and added. The new name would immediately be visible everywhere across the site. I guess they could create a completely new account, log in as the old account, remove the FP, log in as the new account, and add the FP, but I don't know why someone would do that.

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2 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Changing the name on an account wouldn't require the points to be removed and added. The new name would immediately be visible everywhere across the site. I guess they could create a completely new account, log in as the old account, remove the FP, log in as the new account, and add the FP, but I don't know why someone would do that.

Your explanation makes no sense because I didn't get a deletion notice from project-gc with the old cacher's name  nor a new favorite point notification from project-gc under the new name. I got what everyone else has mentioned as shown in this snip.

Cinnamon Bobka Favorite Point.JPG

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40 minutes ago, SerenityNow said:

Your explanation makes no sense because I didn't get a deletion notice from project-gc with the old cacher's name  nor a new favorite point notification from project-gc under the new name. I got what everyone else has mentioned as shown in this snip.

Cinnamon Bobka Favorite Point.JPG

My post wasn't meant as an explanation of what's going on, but rather to point out that your proposed explanation seemed unlikely. I have no idea what type of processes Project-GC uses, nor what the "OPTOUT" notation might mean. They'd be the ones who could give a definitive answer. hzoi's post seems to imply that there's already a discussion of this matter going on over on their forums.

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1 hour ago, The A-Team said:

My post wasn't meant as an explanation of what's going on, but rather to point out that your proposed explanation seemed unlikely. I have no idea what type of processes Project-GC uses, nor what the "OPTOUT" notation might mean. They'd be the ones who could give a definitive answer. hzoi's post seems to imply that there's already a discussion of this matter going on over on their forums.

I posted to the thread at project-gc forums but have not received an answer. Not much of a discussion over there!

 

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I disagree with the earlier post on the Project-GC support forum thread referenced by hzoi.  The post theorized that GDPR was to blame - the right a person has to eliminate all traces of their Geocaching.com account.   Once a person exercises that right, all their logs disappear entirely.  There's no opportunity to go back and remove favorite points.

 

There is a separate right to be anonymous at Project-GC, requesting that your statistics be hidden from public view.  It is possible that accounts that have exercised that option are now fiddling around with favorite point assignments, such that the related cache owner notifications include an anonymized "OPTOUT" account name.  This is pure speculation on my part as I have no special knowledge of Project-GC's inner workings.

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10 hours ago, Keystone said:

The post theorized that GDPR was to blame - the right a person has to eliminate all traces of their Geocaching.com account.   Once a person exercises that right, all their logs disappear entirely.  There's no opportunity to go back and remove favorite points.

 

What would happen to their cache hides in that situation?

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4 minutes ago, JL_HSTRE said:

 

What would happen to their cache hides in that situation?

Cache pages remain available for reference by other geocachers, such as prior finders, and they continue to be reported in a "My Finds" pocket query.  When a geocacher exercises their right to delete account information, all of their owned cache pages will be archived and the name of the cache owner is changed to "[DELETED_USER]."  See this Help Center article.

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Potentially, this is caused by folks who have opted out of third party websites on geocaching.com adding favorite points.

 

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My friend said she had "selected to opt out of third party vendors" on geocaching.com.  To me this makes sense (and I'm really nobody so take this with a grain of salt!), but in essence Project-GC has no idea who my friend is at this point.  Her favorite point is "removed" on Project-GC (and is assigned the "OPTOUT" user name), but the total on geocaching.com remains the same.  In order to reconcile the difference, Project-GC is adding one back in on their end.  Again...this makes sense to me, but since I don't work for P-GC I'm not sure if this is the actual case or not.

 

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This seems to be the reason, view link and scroll to bottom of page (found under Settings > Authorizations):

https://www.geocaching.com/account/settings/authorizations

Authorized Developer Authorizations

Control the information you share with Geocaching.com's Authorized Developer applications.

Do not allow Authorized Developer applications to access my public profile information. Learn more

 

https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=27&pgid=920

 

 

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