It has been brought to our attention that a vandal is maliciously editing OpenStreetMap in order to claim places as ineligible in Niantic Wayfarer (due to placement on school/preschool grounds).
For instance, school grounds have been expanded in a way not reflecting reality, or even a residential property has been marked as a school. He specifically targets places all around Poland frequented by players from a group he’s in a personal conflict with.
Example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/202203298/history – please observe how it was marked in the past – there has never been a school in that place.
To that end, he created a multitude of sock-puppet accounts which have been banned (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14)
We ban his new accounts as soon as we discover them, however the community may not always revert his changes instantly and the damage (i.e. unjustly deleting a portal in Wayfarer) might have been already done at that point.
Niantic Moderators: when in doubt, please do not treat OSM as ground truth for portal ineligibility. Please cross-check with aerial imagery (like Google, Geoportal.gov.pl) and demand street address on school/preschool website as proof.
You can also use “query features” to get info about OSM objects, consider viewing history of an object or click changeset number to see if there are any comments from other users.
If you suspect an intentionally wrong edit to school/preschool has been made, please either report the user (if you’re logged in) or e-mail the Data Working Group (OSM moderators) at data@osmfoundation.org