Fictitious caching

[+CarriVT]

Just attended an event I hosted which included an unveiling of my new virtual.  All the attendants were known to me and signed a log.  We then went to the new virtual.  While we were still there, an individual with a basic membership logged my event with both a will attend and an attended about 40 min after it was over.  While we were still at the virtual, he logged the virtual, albeit without proof of actually being there.  
I did delete the Will attend and the attended for the event. I used the word fraud in the reason for the deletion.   He apparently deleted the virtual find after I caught him on the event.   I looked at his profile.  Claimed to have finds today in Kentucky, Vermont and the United Kingdom all today.   
 

 

when I looked at his profile a few hours ago there were almost 1000 finds, including many countries like China in June. Now it is at 397, mostly US.  North Carolina for some. 
 

I still think this needs to be reported.   He may be self correcting, but he still needs some authority to look over his activity.  

how to get Groundspeak to act on this?

Edited June 23 by CarriVT
Typo

[Pup Patrol]

Sounds like a spammer.  Contact Groundspeak:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php

 

 

--Pup Patrol

[Keystone]

You will see that this account has already been locked by Geocaching HQ.  Sometimes the account is unlocked later, after some "counseling."

[+barefootguru]

On 6/24/2024 at 12:32 PM, Keystone said:

You will see that this account has already been locked by Geocaching HQ.  Sometimes the account is unlocked later, after some "counseling."

What's the threshold for HQ intervention?  I reported someone in Germany armchair logging stacks of archived caches in Aotearoa New Zealand, and they just said the person was only cheating themself.

[+MNTA]

Yep!

[+baer2006]

10 hours ago, barefootguru said:

What's the threshold for HQ intervention?  I reported someone in Germany armchair logging stacks of archived caches in Aotearoa New Zealand, and they just said the person was only cheating themself.

That sounds a bit familiar.

 

I also reported a guy (also from Germany ), who is very regularly armchair-logging a lot of caches (often to "fulfill" a challenge). The answer from HQ was exactly the same ("... only cheating themselves"). I admit, that this answer is annoying me more than the actual cheating . And BTW, if someone wonders why I even bothered and contacted HQ in the first place: The guy has a template log, where he makes quite snide remarks about his "stalkers" (his word), telling them to "get a life" and mind their own business (the guy is widely known as a cheater in the local community).

[+Jayeffel]

As long as there are numbers connected to. any activity or event there will be those who feel it necessary to falsify info. The numbers attached to caches Found or Did Not Find per individual cacher should really only mean anything to that caches. Geocaching as I see it is not competitive  other than trying to outdo yourself. But it is nice to see how your own numbers match others. I can look back over the 6 years ands the trend - due to wife's health care concerns mainly my Found caches have dropped significantly the past few years. 

[+MNTA]

Look at it from HQ's perspective. "Cheating" is possible world wide and every day. If you want them to be able to monitor and police the world our premium membership fees will need to increase significantly and in the end they will fail. Don't make it a competition.

 

I have caught and deleted an arm chair log. Noticed a new person sign my remote fire road cache and found he was from England. Great don't get a lot of folks from there as this is not a tourist destination. I then noticed he signed my cache as well as a remote cache in Georgia and several in England on the same day. I let the COs know my suspicions. The Georgia CO asked him if he had invented a Tardis as it was physically impossible to travel in a day unless you had a private jet. He admitted to accidentally logging and I deleted the log. But to be honest other than an audacious story it really did not harm me at all. 

 

[+thebruce0]

51 minutes ago, MNTA said:

But to be honest other than an audacious story it really did not harm me at all. 

All I really care about these days is log accuracy insofar as recent logs may well affect other geocachers' decisions. In that context, people's logging practices do affect other people. It's not about the numbers then.

Admittedly, while I may occasionally get a log on a cache years prior that's clearly not legitimate but it doesn't affect me or anyone at all, I still follow up on it and may well delete the log if I think it's someone 'cheating' the system, mainly to do my part in deterring that sort of mentality, which could lead to that person ending up affecting someone else if they never hit a roadblock.

 

Ultimately, I try to hold people to legitimate logging practice primarily for the impact false logs or a habit of false logging can actually have on other geocachers, not the competitive/numbers aspect.

[+baer2006]

3 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Ultimately, I try to hold people to legitimate logging practice primarily for the impact false logs or a habit of false logging can actually have on other geocachers, not the competitive/numbers aspect.

^^ This!

If someone logs a find like "Found nothing, but log a find anyway because <whatever>", then the statement that they're only cheating themselves is somewhat true (except that it can take much longer for a defunct cache to get off the board). So I don't have a big problem with admitted fake finds. The problem are the "hidden" fake logs, which can give a false impression, that a cache is still (or again) findable.

[+barefootjeff]

6 hours ago, MNTA said:

But to be honest other than an audacious story it really did not harm me at all. 

 

Perhaps "harm" is too strong a word, but the recent spate of false logs I've had has certainly inconvenienced me. I try to be a conscientious CO, so if I get a log that looks suspicious I'll go out and check the physical logbook. In these cases, I don't think the logs weren't intentional cheating, they were from newbie app-only never-visited-the-website PMs who didn't have a clue about non-traditional caches or the need to actually find the physical cache and sign the logbook before claiming it as found. Well, I presume that was the case, because after doing the drive and hike out to GZ to confirm there was no signature, I sent them messages querying their logs and providing some information about cache types, but as always seems to be the case in these situations, there were no replies.

 

Then after a couple of weeks, before deleting their online find, I'll revisit the cache in case they went back to sign the log. In the most recent one they actually had done that, although there was no new online log to indicate that or any reply to me, so while for the newbie it was probably a good outcome, for me it was two visits to the cache plus the time spent composing my message in a way that didn't sound too officious or reprimanding, something I wouldn't have had to do if they just followed the fundamental rule of sign the logbook before logging a find online.

[+Goldenwattle]

If all COs checked their logs and deleted logs with no signatures this problem would be solved. No signature or other proof of find, I delete. Recently I have become less strict with beginners though, instead sending them a message explaining they need to sign the log in future. Though if after being told that, they don't sign a future cache find of one of mine, I will delete that and the previous claim, which I had left. That's why I use messaging, as I have a record of previous messages. I haven't needed though to do that yet.

 

Some armchair loggers are capable of amazing things. Finishing a multicache in one afternoon, that takes a drive of over 700kms, an overnight ferry ride and then another drive. The CO of that cache deleted their claim, with "I don't think so" or very similar words.

Another armchair logger claimed a cache find for a cache that needs a drive of over 4,000kms, when the state borders here in Australia were closed for Covid.

Others of course are capable of travel to several continents on the same day.

 

If HQ don't take these things seriously, it can damage honest geocachers interest in the game, and therefore damage geocaching itself. Cheats need to be treated seriously for the games future.

[+MNTA]

3 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

If all COs checked their logs and deleted logs with no signatures this problem would be solved. No signature or other proof of find, I delete. Recently I have become less strict with beginners though, instead sending them a message explaining they need to sign the log in future. Though if after being told that, they don't sign a future cache find of one of mine, I will delete that and the previous claim, which I had left. That's why I use messaging, as I have a record of previous messages. I haven't needed though to do that yet.

 

Some armchair loggers are capable of amazing things. Finishing a multicache in one afternoon, that takes a drive of over 700kms, an overnight ferry ride and then another drive. The CO of that cache deleted their claim, with "I don't think so" or very similar words.

Another armchair logger claimed a cache find for a cache that needs a drive of over 4,000kms, when the state borders here in Australia were closed for Covid.

Others of course are capable of travel to several continents on the same day.

 

If HQ don't take these things seriously, it can damage honest geocachers interest in the game, and therefore damage geocaching itself. Cheats need to be treated seriously for the games future.

 

How do you propose solving this problem. Any issue brought up here in the forum is usually yelled down and silenced. Also most mechanisms to prevent cheating can be faked as well.  But to me that would be better than nothing and hearing the complaints. No I'm not going to fake my phone location to be somewhere else just for a virtual smiley but others may. Not many I hope. I am of the group that says it only hurts the cheaters and wish COs would do what they agreed to do when they hid the cache. 

 

- Use geo-fencing for logging, must support offline usage

- Tag the location of the find it log, though how does this work if I log them from home

- Look at the historical gps data of the app were you even near the final coordinates? Does not prove log was signed.

- Take a picture of the signed log and submit during logging (personally I think this is the easiest low tech solution) 

- scan some sort of code or keyword found in/on the container as proof. The code could be randomized to prevent cheating.

 

Remember before shooting down these ideas all have issues and problems that would need to be solved. Remember AL have already solved many of these issues. Maybe traditional cache caching needs to evolve as well. Also no shared accounts and then a child in the future back logging AL. Maybe that should be locked out in the future.

 

To loop back to the OP many of these ideas would apply to the fictitious attended event. 

 

I have found a cache accidentally without using GPS or my phone App and logged it later. Maybe that no longer is accepted.

 

[+Goldenwattle]

56 minutes ago, MNTA said:

How do you propose solving this problem. Any issue brought up here in the forum is usually yelled down and silenced. Also most mechanisms to prevent cheating can be faked as well.

I just did propose how this could be solved. If everyone checked their logs and deleted non-signers who can't supply other proof. I know this won't happen though, as people are lazy, or lack confidence to delete logs. I myself cringe when deleting logs, as I hate to do it. My suggestion for checking logs has NEVER been yelled down and silenced. If fact the opposite, with usually lots of ticks. Very difficult to fake a signature on the log. Yes, friends could sign for each other, but I wouldn't know that now. I was talking about when there is no signature.

 

56 minutes ago, MNTA said:

Use geo-fencing for logging, must support offline usage

- Tag the location of the find it log, though how does this work if I log them from home

- Look at the historical gps data of the app were you even near the final coordinates? Does not prove log was signed.

- Take a picture of the signed log and submit during logging (personally I think this is the easiest low tech solution) 

- scan some sort of code or keyword found in/on the container as proof. The code could be randomized to prevent cheating.

You seen to be talking about ALs, which are apparently easy to cheat with and get away with it, for those tech savey enough. I was not. Where did I mention ALs? I mentioned signatures. How many ALs does that apply to? I rarely bother finding ALs or even thinking about them (only when I have run out of real caches, or there's a bonus cache I want to log), and have never published one and have no intention of ever publishing an AL, so I have no AL for people to cheat with. ALs are too faulty to bother with. Plus take the supervision away from the CO. If this changed for regular caches and COs were banned from being able to monitor logging and deal with cheats as with ALs, I would delete my regular caches. Problem solved then. Wouldn't help the game though.

Edited June 27 by Goldenwattle

[chubb12c]

i also i have the same user bc I was getting spam dnf and found by a user from Russia non stop but I contact the geocache hq they take care of it I really hate cheater like fr 

[whoiamexposing]

as a retire geocacher i return this year bc I leave on 2013 bc of people cheating and putting fake dnf/ found also this make me frustrated that I quit it but I decided to return again to play geocache now is better bc I can easily remove and report it but Groundspeak really need to do something about this bc it can ruin the game 

[+cerberus1]

On 6/26/2024 at 5:03 PM, baer2006 said:

If someone logs a find like "Found nothing, but log a find anyway because <whatever>", then the statement that they're only cheating themselves is somewhat true (except that it can take much longer for a defunct cache to get off the board). So I don't have a big problem with admitted fake finds. The problem are the "hidden" fake logs, which can give a false impression, that a cache is still (or again) findable.

 

Yeah...  I went to find a couple caches for a promotion.  Most had maintenance issues, but one was only the top of a bison tube.

People were finding that "top" and claiming it a find for over a year.  A jerk like me (by talk at events) comes in and NM it.

The only NM on that cache...  The "CO" got in a huff and archived all caches in the park. 

I picked up the bison top and a couple others two weeks later, but there's a bunch still there.

People were happy to find a top and claim it a find... 

[+Smitherington]

I found just of a bison tube once. I retrieved one out of my vehicle and replaced it.  If I did not have one with me I would not have claimed it as a find but would have notified the CO. 

[+Goldenwattle]

On 6/27/2024 at 3:01 AM, thebruce0 said:

Admittedly, while I may occasionally get a log on a cache years prior that's clearly not legitimate but it doesn't affect me or anyone at all, I still follow up on it and may well delete the log if I think it's someone 'cheating' the system

Good on you .

I place photographs of the logs on my OM logs. Therefore If someone logged years later, I could go back and check the photograph, and then delete them if necessary. I don't get many of those very late logs though. Maybe because they can see the historic photographic evidence. Some people though who have signed the log, can be VERY slow to log, but their signature will be in a photographed log.

Edited June 29 by Goldenwattle