What is Compartmental Access Level (CAL)? - DISCUSSION
What is Compartmental Access Level (CAL)?
LAST UPDATED: 21JUL22
To help limit the impact of inappropriate gameplay in Ingress, the Compartmental Access Level (CAL) system protects select Portals on the gameboard. Agents with insufficient Compartmental Access will receive the following error message when attempting to interact with specific Portals:
Insufficient Compartmental Access detected. Higher Compartmental Access Level (CAL) required to interact with this Portal.
An Agent's CAL is dynamic and may increase or decrease over time. If you believe this to be an error, please contact us using the Help button below.
The CAL system will only trigger for some Portals and only for Agents with insufficient access. While these Agents will not be able to interact with CAL-protected Portals, they will continue to be able to interact with other Portals without restrictions. Portals under CAL-protection are known strategic Portals used in past Agent operations, as well as a dynamic list of Portals based on XM and Portal Network fluctuations.
Regular gameplay activity may increase your Conditional Access Level over time and grant access to CAL-protected Portals.
If you've received the CAL error message and believe it to be a mistake, please contact support to have your account reviewed.
- Tap the Main Menu button.
- Visit the Settings menu.
- Scroll down to the Help Center section and click Go.
- In the top right corner, select Contact Us.
- Select Account Help.
- Select Compartmental Access Level (CAL).
Since NIA can't seem to announce a feature like this on their official forums, figured I would get it started...
Comments
@NianticBrian My first question is this, what is considered "Not Playing" and how long would that be? Person like me is always traveling for the world for work, traveling across the ocean where I can't interact or even open the app for days at a time. How does that effect this CAL?
Is or will there be an observable list of CAL selected portals?
I also think there should be some sort of visual that is privately viewed by each agent on their CAL. I would hate to get back from a trip after not playing for a bit to where my CAL goes down, do a hike in a remote area that has low data just to find out I can't interact with CAL portal(s) due to an unknown low CAL.
Unlikely we'll have anyone from Niantic comment on any of this until we have proof that OG agents are being blocked from "normal" gameplay. A screenshot from a "different agent" that we know nothing about doesn't hold much weight in my opinion. Until then, it's the normal, figure it out on your own kinda deal... Right now, we're all just making assumptions and need real world data and experience.
Well if you want to tell me how how the agent I mentioned should fall in low CAL with these stats be my guest.
Some people should be very worried about their CAL. This is some of the highest stats you will see on a Rural player. I am being intentionally vague about the agent.
Whats their weekly stat?
I only saw the screenshot, so I could only make vague assumptions about the agent. I appreciate you adding some clarity to the agent "profile" that is seeing the alert and that definitely makes me a little more nervous about this new counter-measure...
Nefarious actors don't deserve a friendly message in the scanner and a support page explaining an anti-cheat mechanism.
Rules-abiding Agents don't need these things because they should never see or have need of them.
The message and support page exist only because of false positives. So, is Niantic expecting the overall false positive rate of their anti-cheat mechanism(s) to go up, down, or remain the same? Do they expect the nature of false positives to change?
Well, one should assume, that in typical Niantic fashion, we are actually beta testing this new feature. At least they're providing a channel for feedback, someone thought ahead on this one, lol
@Toxoplasmolly writes:
Rules-abiding Agents don't need these things because they should never see or have need of them.
The word should in that sentence carries a lot of weight. Niantic has a long and storied history of implementing things like this and getting them wrong, either because they made some bad assumptions/decisions or because of technical errors. I expect we'll see a fair number of false positives.
What is their most recent stats? The past week?
EDIT: Doh, already asked. The point is that's going to have some play into it. We're not going to ever get the full details of this program.
If Niantic told us how to be in good standing then the spoofers would know too and would work around it. Be careful what you ask for.
I still maintain that if you are intend on going to a strageic portal, you should be expected to upload a scan of a portal with enough comm data, and to also scan and upload later such a strageic portal, as a minimum for 2FLA
I have zero faith that the new anti cheat system implemented will be enough to deter bad actors
@Grogyan And what about people whose phones are not capable of scanning?
@Hosette the scanning feature has been in place for 2 years now, with Niantic many times expressing the move to more AR content.
Therefore if you haven't upgraded to a more modern mobile already. You might as well give out all your personal, bank information to everyone, as your device has already been hacked by nefarious people.
Honestly you don't even have to buy the latest and greatest, even 2yr old mobiles support AR scanning
I already see that people have disagreed with a prior post, shows that there are players who expect to spoof portals, even with this new CAL system
Let me know how scanning goes on BGAN or Hard Booster
Read my previous post where I expressly outlined this use case.
https://youtube.com/shorts/n5Cq6uDLxp0?feature=share
Although I do not recommend that anyone buy such an old device. I have just proven that you can use a very old device for wayspot scanning.
And is currently pretty cheap in the US, $250
@Grogyan My phone is a current flagship and is perfectly capable of scanning. However, I'm not arrogant enough to assume that everyone is as well-heeled as I am and has access to the most modern phones. There are parts of the world where a typical phone is way cheaper than what I and my friends use.
If CAL works, it will prevent nefarious actors from taking action and modifying the game board.
Requiring that a scan be uploaded after the fact does not. At best, it's supporting evidence that an account that has already modified the game board should be banned and all that. I'm not sure that's any more of a deterrent than the systems already place (before CAL).
Good work, if this sytem is working smoothly as described and is not simply a propaganda or excuse of, in the future, not dealing with reports for spoofers on strategic portals. Considering the fact that Niantic is very cautious and conservative about banning spoofers (among all my accurate and timely reports, only 30% undeniable spoofers would get banned), I believe that when they introduced this system, they set up low threshold so that only those who act in a way far from normal players would receive CAL warning, regardless of their player level or profile data. In this case, any high level player who receive CAL warning should think about the reason behind it and try to be honest. You know why, don't you?
That is not what I said, I said was to upload a scan from a portal that has good comm coverage first.
Then upload later a scan of the strategic portal.
While this isn't perfect, the FACT that a scan was uploaded firsr shows that you are prepared to upload a scan later of the actual wayspot.
That button push to scan, is only a few bytes, which vindicates that you are physically at a strageic portal, that MAY be in a low signal area or is accessible by BGAN only
Firstly, abundant data cannot prove that a specific player is playing as normally as others. Secondly, I suppose CAL is a rating system where player level does count but not heavily. Still, level 16 would add some though not many points to it if I were the developer, but if in this case the CAL system still thinks that there is no sufficient evidence that this player is a truly reliable player...
Thus, regarding the example you raised, either the CAL system fails completely (which is possible, considering the fact that Ingress development team often crash things and introduce new bugs like https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/comment/134014/#Comment_134014 ), or this player has be doing some actions that significantly reduced the score for the CAL system, some actions that normal players won't do.
Niantic computes a risk score for a portal, and a risk score for the Agent. If the risk is too high, the action can't be done.
It's like a credit agency computing the risk that you'll not pay a bill/loan, or insurance company computing the risk that your house will need a new roof, or you will have a major medical expense. Risk calculating is done all the time.
A problem will probably be with agents who only play once a month or so, whose spouse/partner plays more -- it could look like one is the backpack account of the other. But, their risk score might improve if some part of their game is very different, or if they have a Pogo account using the same email address, or who knows what other conditions.
Or you really aren't thinking logically. AR is dependable on iPhones but Google has been iffy with AR support ever since they dropped Daydream. That really puts Android on a negative if you think scanning is needed especially when the system to submit such scans has no verification.
What? A scan can go from 20 to 80 MB. I don't want to even fathom the cost on a BGAN.
Niantic has never been thinking about eliminating ALL of the problematic accounts. This game is not about hard-core achievement either. You cannot even find a "Global Ranking" or "Hall of Fame" in the Ingress game. Thus I won't suppose Niantic has any interests to "ensure that when players are doing OP they are doing it in a completely honest way and everyone involved is playing clean and clear".
I'm talking about the scan at the actual "strategic" portal — the only scan of any interest in this thread.
That scan provides no vindication, because Niantic has no idea what's actually there at the moment you're taking the scan. They don't whether the portal's object is still there. They don't whether someone decided to redo the landscaping around the object. They might not have other up-to-date sources of imagery to compare against. Etc. Etc. The best they can do is to say, "Well, it's not obviously a fake scan."
Ignoring that, the scan needs to be verified at the same time the Agent wants to interact with the portal. The question is not, "Was the Agent there?" or "Can the Agent get there?" The question is, "Is the Agent there at the same moment they're trying to interact?" It's time and place. You're ignoring the time component.
I suppose the team won't design the CAL system in a way that players simply don't play often but always play normally would be punished by having their CAL score reduced. Meanwhile, if I were the developer, I would write a logic that "Switching accounts on the same device heavily and afterwards the relevant accounts' either playing alike or part of them playing silently, would sharply reduce CAL score".