How to avoid getting banned using the API?

[nequito]

Recently multiple accounts were permanently banned, But the exact reason of how they knew we cheated is unknown, i have a couple of speculations:

• The time delay when traveling big distances (6m/s is the average for walking, spiralpoi travels at 100m/s)
• Accounts with previous softbans (accounts that have previously been banned for 3 to 8 hours)
• High rate of xp's per minute (it's almost impossible for a normal account to gain 1,000xp per minute while a bot can) -Time Between every apicall

These are only speculations i've made of how Niantic knows that we are cheating, but it would be a good idea to colaborate in order to know the specific reason of why we are getting banned.

[alxnegrila]

Softbans do not impact. At least not the softbans received when the first version was running...

[dnsBlah]

you call 21.6km/hr walking? thats more pretty good cycling speed

anyways I'm even doubting to provide location updates every second? Anyone has an opinion on that?

• provide random accelerometer variables with every request
• randomize the catchpokemon variables (spin, hit position etc, even miss sometimes)
• don't walk straight lines but use the googlemaps.directions api
• random offsets in your updates to the server, up to.. 0.00002 (should be around 30m)
• run the bot for X amount of hours, and automatically go on with the next account
• use multiple proxies and change them randomly once a while
• provide random gps parameters (meaning: amount of sattelites, angles of satelites, signal, accuracy)

[RyanHope]

I can confirm that softbans are not important to getting hardbanned. I snipe with my bot by deliberately triggering thew softban and then unsoftbanning my self using the 40 spin trick. I've done this at least 100 times in one day and the account is not banned.

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:21 PM, dnsBlah notifications@github.com wrote:

you call 21.6km/hr walking? thats more pretty good cycling speed

anyways I'm even doubting to provide location updates every second? Anyone has an opinion on that?

• provide random accelerometer variables with every request
• randomize the catchpokemon variables (spin, hit position etc, even miss sometimes)
• don't walk straight lines but use the googlemaps.directions api
• random offsets in your updates to the server, up to.. 0.00002 (should be around 30m)
• run the bot for X amount of hours, and automatically go on with the next account
• use multiple proxies and change them randomly once a while
• provide random gps parameters (meaning: amount of sattelites, angles of satelites, signal, accuracy)

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Ryan Hope, PhD Psychology Department Carnegie Mellon University

[nfettinger]

You post this today, even though Niantic removed the method of spinning pokestops weeks ago?

[RyanHope]

Really because I still have bots performing the 40 spin hack as of last night.

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 9:42 AM, Nfettinger notifications@github.com wrote:

You post this today, even though Niantic removed the method of spinning pokestops weeks ago?

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Ryan Hope, PhD Psychology Department Carnegie Mellon University

[ApratimPanwar]

@ryanHope Hardbans are instant , they take around a week to judge and ban , unfortunately even using IV checks accounts get banned , so using api = ban , they somehow figured it out

[RyanHope]

Yes, hardbans might instant. I am not arguing that. All I am saying it getting softbanned does not flag you for a hardban and that the 40spin fix for softbans was still working as of yesterday.

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 11:27 AM, MINEREAPER notifications@github.com wrote:

@ryanHope https://github.com/ryanHope Hardbans are instant , they take around a week to judge and ban , unfortunately even using IV checks accounts get banned , so using api = ban , they somehow figured it out

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Ryan Hope, PhD Psychology Department Carnegie Mellon University

[ApratimPanwar]

@ryanhope thats was something from ingress's time , people in ingress still use it after 3 years lol

[ghost]

What I don't understand is how I got the below message at 8:39PM Eastern last night, yet my account was not actually banned since I'm currently playing the game and catching pokemon and hitting up pokestops.

"Trainer,

Your account has been terminated. Use of any other third-party software or app, including but not limited to scripts/apps, applications used to falsify your location, emulators, modified or unofficial software, and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner is considered cheating.

If you believe your account has been terminated in error, you may fill out this form. Please consider your account permanently terminated unless we reply back to your appeal.

• NianticOps"

Is this a bluff from Niantic or is there a delay between the message and them actually banning my account?

Also, to help us get to the bottom of this, here's my two cents:

I never used my own account to access PokemonGo via the API, but I did jailbreak my phone, utilized tsProtector8+ as well as Location Faker to spoof my gps manually (no bots).

Futhermore, I always spoofed within my city and always closed the PokemonGo app before changing my GPS coordinates that way I can always make the argument that I was traveling the distance across my city when the app was off (however it was within a 5 second period that I was in one end of the city and the next).

Therefore my speculation is the following:

• They can detect that jailbroken iphones and are banning them as well (Note: I thought tsProetector8+ solved for this)
• They can determine 'cheating' by looking for large GPS enough changes within two time periods.

[RyanHope]

I think most permabans that people are getting recently are actually a result too many user reports of gps spoofing when taking gyms and/or suspect high level trainers/pokemon, etc.

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 2:38 PM, Chris Cruz notifications@github.com wrote:

What I don't understand is how I got the below message at 8:39PM last night, yet my account was not actually banned

"Trainer,

Your account has been terminated. Use of any other third-party software or app, including but not limited to scripts/apps, applications used to falsify your location, emulators, modified or unofficial software, and/or accessing Pokémon GO clients or backends in an unauthorized manner is considered cheating.

If you believe your account has been terminated in error, you may fill out this form. Please consider your account permanently terminated unless we reply back to your appeal.

• NianticOps"

Is this a bluff from Niantic or is there a delay between the message and them actually banning my account?

Also, to help us get to the bottom of this, here's my two cents:

I never used my own account to access PokemonGo via the API, but I did jailbreak my phone, utilized tsProtector8+ as well as Location Faker to spoof my gps manually (no bots).

Futhermore, I always spoofed within my city and always closed the PokemonGo app before changing my GPS coordinates that way I can always make the argument that I was traveling the distance across my city when the app was off (however it was within a 5 second period that I was in one end of the city and the next).

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/keyphact/pgoapi/issues/106#issuecomment-240815928, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAImzaBb6J9HUgy8lQIaFyq59BfJ75hRks5qhKaYgaJpZM4JmkHk .

Ryan Hope, PhD Psychology Department Carnegie Mellon University

[glennvgastel]

I've tested with sort of a "honeypot" method with 14 different accounts. Here are my findings : Tested all these for 3 days straight except for the emulator.

No ban

• Emulator, one area
• IV checking
• IV checking and renaming
• Bot in one area, low walking speed
• Scanner, however too many request will return an empty map

Softbans

• Emulator with large location changes
• Emulator with high walking speed (20+ kph)
• Bot in one area, high walking speed
• Bot teleporting - speed not relevant

Temp IP Ban

Seems to be changed to a +/- 8 hour temp ban ONCE, resulting in status code 3. Second time is a permaban.

• Happened to one bot following a predefined path (with some jitter) for 4 hours in a loop.

Permaban

• Bot with API requests without delays. Banned after batch evolving 4 hours in.
• Bot with impossible location changes, after 4 hours
• Bot with a predefined path, the second time it got banned
• Interesting : I manually controlled one bot to snipe various rare pokemon. Settings were the same as the bot in one area, low walking speed. Got encounter ID and never teleported - banned after 5 snipes.

Emails received, no ban yet

• Happened to 2 bot accounts, one is now permabanned 10 hours after the email.

[drricksanchez321]

@Calcyfer For each of the permabans, did you receive an email?

[glennvgastel]

@drricksanchez321 No, I did not. Only for 3 accounts.

[dnsBlah]

For me it took now... 2 weeks before I received the mail. (after I got banned)

[dnsBlah]

By the way I just noticed that one of the newer accounts got banned This was a pretty randomized/humanized account -no teleporting -no extensive catching -no softunbanning (not needed) -not playing for large amount of hours -wandering through central park -randomized catch parameters, even missing -randomized offsets when set positions -randomized offsets on arrival (on location of pokemon or forts) -no team member -no name change, only initial -no mass evolutions -did inventory cleanup to my max amounts per item(s) -kept pidgeys,rattata's for evolutions later on (didnt yet) -havent left the park at all

and almost exactly 7 days ago I created the account and got banned now maybe shouldve kept time difference in account.. NL <-> New York

[dnsBlah]

• max. walkspeed 3-5km/hr, to pokestops
• max. walkspeed 4-7km/hr
• auto incubation
• level awards when bots currentXP exceeded nextLevelXP

sorry for new comment, im on iphone

[nequito]

@dnsBlah what was the level of your account?

I have an hipotesis. I think that they focus on banning accounts with a high level (< level 28) because i´ve been using my old bot on a new account for some time and i´m already level 23 and still no ban.

Also i think bans are higly related to playing for large amount of hours, cause i´ve been using the bot only a couple of hours a day.

[dnsBlah]

@nequito The botted account was almost lvl 22. As I said, no problems at all for 7 days in a row. (approx.. 3-4 hours a day)

[drricksanchez321]

I've been running a pretty aggressive bot for several days, with a normal humanized sleep schedule and random pauses, 24 and no ban yet. Ive modified the api with regards to altitude. I added random.random()/10 to the constant 8 to factor in a very low noise of .01-.09 meters, sets me apart from other users.

On Aug 20, 2016 2:39 PM, "dnsBlah" notifications@github.com wrote:

@nequito https://github.com/nequito The botted account was almost lvl 22. As I said, no problems at all for 7 days in a row. (approx.. 3-4 hours a day)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/keyphact/pgoapi/issues/106#issuecomment-241216446, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AUCd3EUX55PWse6k4dpp-ORaprggPjx-ks5qh0nbgaJpZM4JmkHk .

[lunarpulse]

I have got 3 banned out of 6 30+ account. Only 1 account which received the ban email but not indeed permanent banned was an active account which I spent some cash on it. The other banned account were not botted for last 1 week and these ones are fast grown ones without any money spent on it.

In my case, banning are not instantaneously determined and also the spending of money on the account. I guess niantic already has flagged all the suspicious accounts over time or use a long term statistical analysis on each account where you can find it on the status menu in the game and ban forst and release if the user issues an appeal of erroneous ban. This is just an opinio based on my banned accounts.

[keyphact]

Not really an issue, but a topic that should be discussed on other mediums.