Soft bans - What we know, should you be worried and how to avoid it

[n2t1712]

Yeah but the strange thing was that for example there was a pidgey and rattata next to the gym i tried to catch the pidgey, it went away, but the rattatas didn't, like i used ultra ball and strawberry for a god damn 100 cp pidgey there's no way he could escape, and i was still able to collect things from pokestops

EDIT: the pidgey went away after the first attempt to catch him

It depends on your level as well. I am level 18 and last night i wasted 5 cherries and 5 blue balls on a 100ish pidgey. The difficulty of catching a pokemon scales with your level if I'm not mistaken. I've been soft banned like 6 times, from my experience you are not banned at all.
I think this is the way Niantic forces nonspoofing competitive gamers to spend money. Also if you notice, the egg inventory is limited to 9 slots only and the only way to get rid of shitty 2km eggs is to buy more incubation.

[vdc]

I usually just stay at one place with 4 pokestops or walk around close there. Have not get ban yet but maybe in the future, then the game is update, they will have new rules for ban. So I try to level up as fast as I can before they release the new update.

Stick around 1 spot will decrease chance of you get ban... that is what I have been doing...

[optus4gplus]

I used FakeGPS/HideMyRoot/BlueStacks last night to set my location 20km away from my home.

I farmed for a few hours then went to sleep.

Once I logged in morning on my phone I got soft ban... hmmm... I was at home.

However as I check my journal, the last pokemon I caugh last night registered as this morning as I opened the app. so it registered I caught the pokemon from location last night and registered my location 20km away which caused the soft ban?

[parkseoul]

I dont think "softbans" will end up mattering.

there are a few instances where i got "softbanned" while playing legitly, which makes me beleive that they wont use "softbans" as a method of determining a "cheater"

1. i took an actual flight from michigan (my home) to alabama, and accidently opened the game while multitasking apps on my phone while on the plane. i was softbanned for several hours. i'm sure other "legit" players experienced this as well.

2. i was logged in on my phone at my apartment, and my friend found a wild snorlax about 20 miles from me at his apartment. i gave him my google password so he could get it for me, and it softbanned me for 15 minutes. i assume this happens to anyone who tries to multilog from large distances, and may happen to "legit" players if they accidentally forget to log out of one device

i think there will likely be bans for emulating/gps spoofing/api calls/etc, but i don't think dodging softbans will actually do any good at dodging the "ban waves" that may come.

[optus4gplus]

yeah sucks which ever way you look at it might not use again... It's just so damn cold to go out at night, winter here lol

[hahaitme]

Haven't been soft banned yet, though I'm pretty cautious. I just follow these rules:

- Only teleport within my city
- I only teleport *kinda* reasonable distances, eg: if it's a 20minute drive from one location to the next, I'll log out for maybe 10 minutes and go do something else then set the GPS and login again.
- Have never teleported while in-game, I always close the app first, set GPS.. wait a few min at least, then re-open pokemon

my theory is that if the teleport distances are "close enough" to driveable distances they'll leave it alone, who knows maybe I'm on a motorbike doing 120 on a highway right. Too hard for them to mark cheaters this way, whereas if you teleport from one country to another within half an hour, it's physically impossible so that's a red flag

In saying that, I'm worried a ban wave will come once they sort the server issues out. Just hope they haven't been flagging spoofers/emulators since day 1, because well that would suck.

[Frostyx]

Well, they could have been flagging but again, they don't even have a CM guy to update on issues and how their team working on that, so I don't think they have much of free time to take care of that but who knows.

Plus they have normal working hours with extra shifts and they are not robots, their team is relatively small afaik.

Still whatever, either way we get what we farmed or get caught in a banwave, both are fine, considering after working with map scrits I now realise how pathetic chances to catch someone rare is when you do that legit way, can't really spend that much time for that

[HunterHero]

Haven't been soft banned yet, though I'm pretty cautious. I just follow these rules:

- Only teleport within my city
- I only teleport *kinda* reasonable distances, eg: if it's a 20minute drive from one location to the next, I'll log out for maybe 10 minutes and go do something else then set the GPS and login again.
- Have never teleported while in-game, I always close the app first, set GPS.. wait a few min at least, then re-open pokemon

my theory is that if the teleport distances are "close enough" to driveable distances they'll leave it alone, who knows maybe I'm on a motorbike doing 120 on a highway right. Too hard for them to mark cheaters this way, whereas if you teleport from one country to another within half an hour, it's physically impossible so that's a red flag

In saying that, I'm worried a ban wave will come once they sort the server issues out. Just hope they haven't been flagging spoofers/emulators since day 1, because well that would suck.

They flag you from your gps movement and the speed of it. The game has a limit and riding a motorcycle would get you banned and hopefully a fine if you actually played riding it.

[hahaitme]

They flag you from your gps movement and the speed of it. The game has a limit and riding a motorcycle would get you banned and hopefully a fine if you actually played riding it.

Are you sure speed is flagged? I see about 4-5 people on the playing it for an entire 45min bus ride on my commute to work every day, majority is on a highway. Car passengers are also playing.
I don't catch many trains these days but the few times I've gotten on one there are flocks of schoolkids standing there playing (whenever there is reception that is).

[PilotPirx]

Ok, so what would be the actual speed limit? I mean we know that for hatching eggs its about 10 - 15km/h, but what would be the speed limit for being soft banned? 50km/h? 100? 300? I mean that would be some crucial information right there. Because if we knew, that would allow us to just set that speed in the GPS spoofing app and wait till character reaches destination - without having to wait for the softban to end like when you just teleport across the globe. I wonder if maybe someone actually checked that.

[padman]

Ok, so what would be the actual speed limit? I mean we know that for hatching eggs its about 10 - 15km/h, but what would be the speed limit for being soft banned? 50km/h? 100? 300? I mean that would be some crucial information right there. Because if we knew, that would allow us to just set that speed in the GPS spoofing app and wait till character reaches destination - without having to wait for the softban to end like when you just teleport across the globe. I wonder if maybe someone actually checked that.

My GF was occasionally able to catch a poke when we were driving on a motorway around 115km/h so the limit must be pretty high. Of course she didn't get any softban at any point.

[sachith]

i haven't been spoofing but yes i do stop my bike at poke stops, but only to collect the goodies. Today i am unable to see any poke stops, gyms even nearby Pokemon(been over 3 hours), rest of the game seems to work fine. any idea guys if this is a soft ban or a bug?

[Sleepyfro]

The speed limit is somewhere between 150km/h and 200km/h

150km/h allows me to run around my city without soft-ban, no teleportation, kind of just seems like a car going triple the speed limit.
200km/h gets me soft-banned. RIP Rhydon.

I believe it just compares the distance and time between logs, and if it exceeds whatever value between 150km/h -> 200km/h..
I would do more testing, but I accidentally flipped the lat/long on my spoofer, and got soft banned.

[NetAnt]

i haven't been spoofing but yes i do stop my bike at poke stops, but only to collect the goodies. Today i am unable to see any poke stops, gyms even nearby Pokemon(been over 3 hours), rest of the game seems to work fine. any idea guys if this is a soft ban or a bug?

what is your location ?
if form a country where game is not released officially, its due to the geo-ban developer put. you have to wait till the game is officially available in your area, they did similar thing in Japan before officially launching the game.

[Magus920]

Just wondering... Anyone know if Niantic soft bans people for using 2 different devices with the same account?

My main device i use my LG G4, no spoofing and playing legit.
My 2nd device is my Nox player with PoGo.

I never make any long trips and when i log in with my Nox, i set my GPS to start where im really at and move around from there.