ross
ross

But also:

My goodness, it’s easy to make a geocaching-/Pokemon Go-type location check-in game.

And:

How on earth do other game (and fitness app!) makers prevent cheating by geeks? Do they encrypt/encode API requests or something? How does no one cheat at Strava?

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kitt
kitt

@ross yes to encrypting communication, but also game play style pattern matching: if your style dramatically changes or you make impossible moves (ex: NYC then SF with a no play gap < ~4-5 hours between), likely cheating

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ross
ross

@kitt Yeah. That wouldn't pick out real-looking data though.

I figure if I could work out the API request structure then could I post an activity that looks real, but where I'm super fast and win all the segments.

I'm thinking, in basic form, you can prevent this by: - encrypt/encode with a one-time random shared token of some sore - obfuscating code that does the encryption/encoding

But it's all an arms race if people really want to scam it - it's all ultimately un-doable?

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kitt
kitt

@ross and people do cheat at strata.

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kitt
kitt

@ross totally an arms race. I think Strava also uses social pressure to suss out the cheaters. Many of the strava segment leaders I know, know the other leaders, have seen them, know about their abilities.

But yes, totally agree on the arms race thing, especially when you can get a dev account and fake GPS location trivially

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In reply to
ross
ross

@kitt Yeah. I'm sure my sister does ALL the time. And she's not even a techie!

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