Some thoughts on botting the most recent banwave! Are you spinning the hamster wheel?

[cl3537]

From the reports of pure decimation on the Pokefarmer forums I have to say it is looking more and more like the people who bot are just spinning the hamster wheel and getting nowhere. Use bot get to level 30 - 33 and then perm ban, restart, rinse and repeat every two weeks.

I'd like to debunk a bunch of theories based on being a witness/participant in many banwaves. I have strong collection of evidence hundreds of reports and input which tells me the most probable scenario is the following, please feel free to contradict me with your own personal or anecdotal evidence but what I present here is pretty strong:

1) Any bot that uses any fake hash will be flagged. There is no safe bot because accessing the API outside of the game client is easy for Niantic to detect and they have had months of API and client updates to work on this.

2) To date the bossland and all other fake paid hashes do not adequately simulate the game client signature so they are all pretty easy for Niantic to detect.

3) While using an old or deprecated API will certainly get you banned faster, even using the current API you still get flagged and if you continue eventually banned.

4) It seems Niantic will only ban accounts who have used botting with API -2 to the current API. They don't go after old accounts that botted before that point so if you stopped like I did months ago you will be safe as long as you never use the API outside of client again.

5) Although it is likely ALL bot accounts are flagged only a certain number are actually banned at any one time by Niantic by necessity(huge numbers of accounts and
databases) or by design(keep botters guessing). They are also trying to keep their user account numbers steady/growing so banning bots too fast is not a good idea for them either.

5) During banwaves Niantic can choose to ban a few or a large number of accounts but it seems the most recent one was more thorough..

6) IT DOESN'T MATTER what your actions are, you are DREAMING if you think you are safe with:

a) I only bot 2 hours a day
b) I don't snipe
c) I only bot around my home area and I keep my IP the same as where I am playing at.
d) I don't do perfect throws everytime
e) I only walk like a normal human and not always the same path

From a logistics perspective deep scanning huge databases of data and recording GPS coordinates is not something Niantic is doing or will likely ever do. Instead they have an easy method of just looking for the fake UK26 signatures and until the Hashing services are able to completely reverse UK26 or use Niantic's own Hashing routine(this was being done before) I think Niantic can and will be able to ban bots whenever it pleases them.

What makes many of you confused is that even if you are flagged you don't get banned right away or ever. I can attest to this I have 4 accounts that I botted up until a few months ago, and I got the, your account is suspected of using thrid party tools popup. Well I stopped all botting and just spoof/snipe right now, the accounts range from lvl 29 - 37 and none are banned over the last 4 months.

This may not be popular news and I see the bot makers and sellers wanting to obfuscate this information with their marketing but this is the reality as I see it.

[cl3537]

No responses. Heh well it looks like this forum is left with the choir who are staying in the dark hoping they survive banwaves or the bot sellers. Tant Pis. Time to post this on Pokemongodev Reddit.

[pogotrainee]

No comment, because we all know it's all true
I only use the botting for some testing and to run through my spare level 0 accounts i still have
All my main accounts i have stopped botting (only a few i use with gps spoofing, but Niantic will hunt those down also as stated in an interview

Hanke also touched on the problem of GPS spoofers, saying it’s not the players fault if they can use the tools that are publicly available to cheat. He confirmed they think it’s Niantics’ responsibility to tackle those issues and ensure a fair playing ground for everyone.

[cl3537]

No comment, because we all know it's all true
I only use the botting for some testing and to run through my spare level 0 accounts i still have
All my main accounts i have stopped botting (only a few i use with gps spoofing, but Niantic will hunt those down also as stated in an interview

Well its one thing to say the right thing in PR, (spoofing is bad its our problem not players), but quite another to spend considerable resources (or any) to stop it.
They don't have to ban spoofers thats going to be difficult and a public nightmare with false positives. But I can think of 4 easy fixes they can make right away which would make sniping impossible both gyms and pokemon and would severely limit the advantages to spoofing much like they have done with the 2000 stop and 1000 pokemon limits they set on botters.

They aren't doing those fixes and left the unban spin technique in the game so I really think that statement is pure PR at this point as opposed to an indication of a real call to action.

[Walker42]

I hightly doubt there is an issue with the hashing service. If there was an issue it would be borderline scam and since the provider is a german company and not some shaddy offshore company I doubt they would risk it selling not working stuff.

I rather think the issue lies in the bots and the greed some tend to develop or some very unnatural behaviour or routines. Personally I was barely touched in any bannwave. I got two accounts banned in the last one knowing I was doing insanely risky stuff like gyms with jumping around. All accounts where I only sniped carefully or botted normally were spared. Level is between 27 and 34.

No offense if you were banned but did you really use a dedicated clean proxy wich no other botters use as well as a fresh account you created without crap like the + trick (not save)? Are you sure you never ****ed up? I did some mistakes myself and was cought in the previous bannwaves but now I have no issues with getting banned whatsoever. I just use dedicated fun accounts for the risky shit liky gyms.

[cl3537]

I rather think the issue lies in the bots and the greed some tend to develop or some very unnatural behaviour or routines. Personally I was barely touched in any bannwave. I got two accounts banned in the last one knowing I was doing insanely risky stuff like gyms with jumping around. All accounts where I only sniped carefully or botted normally were spared. Level is between 27 and 34.

There are problems with your theory such that I completely discredit it. I can't separate signature problems from bot library and other bot information problems but I can tell you it is far more likely to be in the data or the way that bots are sending it to the API that gets them detected not the actions themselves.

When I spoof there is nothing natural about it, I can spin 200 pokestops in an hour, I walk at 4X bike speed, snipe all over the world and jump around. I mess up sniping often and unban myself spinning stops. If behavior alone had consequences I'd be banned, I am level 37, holding 10 - 20 gyms for months, Tons of mons up to 3590CP 100iv Tyranitar, 3100+ CP Blissey etc. and I almost have every unown caught already for the gold medal 23 of 26.

[jackrussell]

How long have you had this Level 37 account? Mine seemed to be banned all the time, even for those I taken from the bots for manual leveling.

[cl3537]

How long have you had this Level 37 account? Mine seemed to be banned all the time, even for those I taken from the bots for manual leveling.

I don't remember probably been lvl 37 since september and another one lvl 36 since the same time. They were both originally botted but then I got the black popup warning to stop using third party tools that is when I stopped botting and they have been safe ever since with just spoofing/sniping.

[playatmcd1]

I agree with OP. I have five out of five accounts banned Friday, all created on 14th February, only used Pokefarmer, never logged in with a real phone. Using multiple IP address from a school district, botted less than 5 mile radius from the botting server. Run no more than 6 hours per day, on walking speed. No sniping.

Something is wrong on the hashing algorithm itself, especially from the 0.53 to 0.57 update trap.

[garbageman]

all of my 12 are fine still since july/august. been botting all week on 4 of them, not very aggresively though...

both this banwave and the last were accompanied by a "Got it" messege upon login. this time its "celebrate pokemon day with festive pikachu" and the last was "New pokemon from the jhoto region have been spotted" and must be CLEARED to advance (in the real client).

did anybody CLEAR this messege prior to botting? do any of the current programs do this automatically? i cleared them on my phone first.

[SLxTnT]

I don't really bot, but I did run 2 accounts, 2 accounts a couple weeks ago to near limits, and randomly use my others (900+).

2 accounts got to level 22, 900+ pokemon caught, and all within 4 hours = banned.
2 accounts botted to high catch count weeks ago = banned.
All others = fine.

First, it's not the hashing server. Anyone who thinks that doesn't even deserve to give feedback. Not only can it be tested by anyone, you can easily tell by getting nearly 0 captchas. Just try using an invalid hash ...

API implementation could be an issue. But when you look at PF getting bans, it's unlikely.

Last would be how you bot.
- Did you get a high pokemon catch / encounter rate today?
- Did you spin too many stops?

They had time to gather legit vs botted data to get realistic values of what a normal human will do within a day, week, month etc.

Another is that scanners barely got hit. Why would that be, if the API implementation is bad?

[Walker42]

There are problems with your theory such that I completely discredit it. I can't separate signature problems from bot library and other bot information problems but I can tell you it is far more likely to be in the data or the way that bots are sending it to the API that gets them detected not the actions themselves.

When I spoof there is nothing natural about it, I can spin 200 pokestops in an hour, I walk at 4X bike speed, snipe all over the world and jump around. I mess up sniping often and unban myself spinning stops. If behavior alone had consequences I'd be banned, I am level 37, holding 10 - 20 gyms for months, Tons of mons up to 3590CP 100iv Tyranitar, 3100+ CP Blissey etc. and I almost have every unown caught already for the gold medal 23 of 26.

I am not refering to the actions itself but the emulation of the PoGo App by the botting software. I noticed a lot of "wrong" behaviour in some bots. Most obvious issue here is the login routine of some bots as well as gym battling. They don't behave like the PoGo App at all.

The hasing service only provides one necessary part and I would say it's unlikely there's something wrong with it. From my personal experiance as well as the experience of two ppl I helped getting started with botting every single ban is correllated to a mistake or greed. I mean look at the past.

We even had the very same hasing routine Niantec used when the leak happened back in the days and what happened? Exactly ppl also got banned, in this case definately becasue of wrong usage or poor client emulation by certain bots.

Edit: Either I am just insanely lucky and niantic loves my bots or the hasing service is just fine. My accounts are working great are happily botting just as I'm writing this. You just need to play it save and change to spoofing when you get to the desired level.

[tajttajt]

My 2x account that l bought is still in active use without ban bought them in september 2016.
With a lot of dragonites, snorlax etc.. :P

But l have try myself to bot and get to level 28 with like 50-60 pokémon with 100% IV but all my accounts have been banned, and l still only played 3-4 hrs / day with them!
I used pay version of pokefarmer but still get banned =/

[cl3537]

I am not refering to the actions itself but the emulation of the PoGo App by the botting software. I noticed a lot of "wrong" behaviour in some bots. Most obvious issue here is the login routine of some bots as well as gym battling. They don't behave like the PoGo App at all.

Yes we are in agreement, I speak with someone who was in the reverse channels for cracking the API and he doesn't believe its the signature (however they don't know a bunch of fields for the signature(UK6s) so the bossland hash could still be the problem. But they do know that the login flow was wrong for all bots and they don't fix it quickly enough for people to be safe. He beleives it is in the libraries the bots are using and incomplete information, and given there are only a few bots left its pretty easy for Niantic to look at these bots and key in on missing data.

The hashing service only provides one necessary part and I would say it's unlikely there's something wrong with it. From my personal experiance as well as the experience of two ppl I helped getting started with botting every single ban is correllated to a mistake or greed. I mean look at the past.

Well bossland hashing service and pokefarmer are run by the same company. Pretty ridiculous that all their botters are getting banned, if they don't know how to fool Niantic than who does?

We even had the very same hasing routine Niantec used when the leak happened back in the days and what happened? Exactly ppl also got banned, in this case definately becasue of wrong usage or poor client emulation by certain bots.

The reversers claim they hook into the client at 0 , 0 coordinates to test if the signatures are correct and matching. If the signature isn't perfect the claim is you won't even get a response back from Niantic API.

But I am just not sure if that is true, the past the fake UK6 hash in 0.45 got responses but also is what flagged all bots and created banwaves I just can't validate what he says with so many missing fields in the bossland signature and then add on top of that the lack of care taken on all the other data being sent to the API by the bot too many things they can get us with.

: Either I am just insanely lucky and niantic loves my bots or the hasing service is just fine. My accounts are working great are happily botting just as I'm writing this. You just need to play it save and change to spoofing when you get to the desired level.

Neither, Niantic only bans a fraction of the botters at a time, keep rolling the dice they will get you soon rather than later. I just don't believe it has anything to do with your actions, it is too costly to record and store movements and then scan retrospectively, Niantic doesn't even know where you teleport to until you spin a stop or engage a pokemon.

I agree after level 30 seems to be when they are more likely to ban you, you are probably flagged right away but they don't ban a lot of accounts <lvl 30 its an interesting deterrant system which keeps us all guessing as to how they are finding out that we are botting. I am glad I stopped on my 4 accounts and have been able to keep them, I doubt too many people today can get up to lvl37 botting and not get banned. Plus with the 1k mons and 2k stops limits today it takes a lot longer to get where I am.

I wish pokefarmer and pokeninja would do more investigation and test accounts and protect its customers more but I don't think they know how or want to.

[cl3537]

My 2x account that l bought is still in active use without ban bought them in september 2016.
With a lot of dragonites, snorlax etc.. :P

But l have try myself to bot and get to level 28 with like 50-60 pokémon with 100% IV but all my accounts have been banned, and l still only played 3-4 hrs / day with them!
I used pay version of pokefarmer but still get banned =/

Well the one that you bought was botted and survived those older banwaves just like mine. As long as you don't bot on it now you are safe for now just sniping/spoofing. I wouldn't chance it though trying to bot on it again.