Speedlock is an unofficial term for an anti-cheating measure in Ingress. It slows down bots and GPS spoofers by prohibiting actions when an agent moves too quickly, but legitimate agents can also encounter it.
Important note: Niantic does not publicly discuss information on their anti-cheating mechanisms because doing so makes it easier for them to be circumvented. However, as the effects of this particular mechanism are frequently felt by legitimate agents, a description of it is provided below. This information was obtained through observation and conjecture, and while it is believed to be accurate, it is not anticipated that it will ever be officially confirmed by Niantic.
Whenever an agent performs any action except collecting XM, a “ripple” is created at the agent’s location, spreading outwards at a speed of 60 kph (approximately 37 mph). Any subsequent action by that agent that occurs outside the ripple will fail. Speedlock ripples time out after 15 minutes.
Speedlock is intended to make things inconvenient for bots and GPS spoofers, but it can unfortunately affect legitimate agents as well, especially while travelling by car or train. Let’s say that you are riding in a car travelling at a constant speed of 40 miles an hour along a straight road. You hack a portal as you pass it. One minute later, you attempt to hack a second portal further down the road. During that interval, you would have traveled 3,520 feet, but the ripple will have traveled only about 3,256 feet, so the hack fails. If you instead pull over and wait five seconds, that gives the ripple enough time to catch up, and the hack will succeed.
While this does slow down bots, it doesn’t stop them; they can easily be programmed to move slow enough to avoid speedlock, or to wait until the it times out before “teleporting.”