Softban Does Not Equal Immediate Perm Ban (New Theory on How You Get Perm Banned)

[cl3537]

This is all speculation but it seems reasonable given the anecdotal evidence.

I make the following educated guesses:

1) You are flagged the minute you use RocketAPI with incorrect hash. Getting all of the unknowns solved and a perfect hash is a daunting almost impossible task.
No botmaker has improved enough on RocketAPI(most just use it as is) so you are flagged the first time you log into the Niantic API outside of the client.

2) It is unknown when Niantic decides to Perm Ban flagged accounts, it is delayed, seemingly random, and they do seem to do it in waves with pauses and then a wave of bans over several days. It does not currently coincide with client updates or server side API updates.

3) Niantic introduces security measures client side, but does not implement them(turn them on server side) right away. (CAPTCHA, NEW UK6, DEPRECATING ALL OLD CLIENTS)

4) All this safe botting stuff , humanize settings etc etc etc is likely placebo. However fast you level up, whether you get 100% IV or snipe or teleport is irrelevant you will get banned anyway just for being detected on first login.

5) Soft Bans seem unrelated to Perm Bans (This is a big one). They do not increase the speed or likelihood of a Perm ban. Even if you get softbanned every day for hitting the Pokemon Catch or PokeStop Limit you do not get Perm Banned until they do another Perm Ban Wave. See #1 you were flagged once again the first second you logged in so doing it slowly and safely is just giving false hope.


Please feel free to refute my theory, I would imagine this would not be too popluar with the bot devs as it invalidates most of these "NEW HUMANLIKE SLOWDOWN" features but nonetheless it fits all of the reports of bans that I know of and the current pause on perm bans that has been going on over the last week or so.

[wwphil]

Which part is "NEW" here?
I don't agree with the theory that "Niantic is able to detec unofficial API immediately", if that's the case, why do they bother to wait before banning those accts?
It's much easier for them to ban the acct once detected, rather than keep a record of botted accts.

[antz12345]

@CL

i like your theory. though I want to add a clause to it.

Niantic knows how much bots n botting is on and I do feel somewhere tiny bit they dont care much about it. Their issue is snipping. Snipping is heavy data outage at their server levels and if snipping is on that causes glitches with them.

Most first ban wave people had snipped either out of choice or out of curiosity once. And that itself was good enough to get them banned. I know some soft ban guys and they got softbanned cause of NOX useage, they werent perma banned in the wave that caught me. I like a stupid guy snipped once.

I am from Asia and in my country they still havent officially launched Pokemon, So after reaching level 29 legit, i snipped a Farfetchd to fill my pokedex and 1 week down i was banned. Where as the Nox user is still playing.

Just a theory - no disrespect

[antz12345]

@wwphil

yeah they need not do spring cleaning :P , but i did feel Ban came in waves. in 1-2 days loads got banned then there was like no one getting banned and again after week-10 days some more got banned.

I too cannot comprehend the reason in "wave" banning. May be simpler at customer service end. Ban a 1000000 and get whole team to send out emails sorts, i dont know

[slopokher]

This is all speculation but it seems reasonable given the anecdotal evidence.

I make the following educated guesses:

1) You are flagged the minute you use RocketAPI with incorrect hash. Getting all of the unknowns solved and a perfect hash is a daunting almost impossible task.
No botmaker has improved enough on RocketAPI(most just use it as is) so you are flagged the first time you log into the Niantic API outside of the client.

they dont seem to be to worked up on banning accounts for just logging in from unofficial client..i say this because of their recent post...

2016. 8. 29
An update on Pokémon GO account bans

We continue to work to ensure the integrity of the game and the health of our servers by blocking unauthorized access and at times by banning offending accounts. This includes blocking bots, data scraping operations, and banning end user accounts associated with those activities. Some players may not have realized that some add-on map apps do more than just show you nearby Pokémon. Each end-user app can be used as a collection tool by the app creator, invisibly collecting and forwarding data to the app creator with or without the knowledge of the end user. These apps can have an effect similar to DDoS attacks on our servers. Because of this we have had to ban some accounts associated with using these add-on map tools, leading to confusion by some users about why they were banned. This is a small subset of the accounts banned.

As a result of some changes made to our infrastructure, we are now able to unban this set of accounts. Add-on maps which scrape data from our servers still violate our Terms of Service and use of them may still result in an account ban going forward. Accounts whose sole purpose was to scrape data are not being unbanned. Accounts which used apps or websites to remotely capture Pokémon, battle or deploy on Gyms, or harvest resources from PokéStops are also not being unbanned. Our main priority is to provide a fair, fun, and legitimate experience for all players, so, aggressive banning will continue to occur for players who engage in these kinds of activities.

from that ..i take it as they are just wanting to kill accounts that were/are aggressive at sniping ..taking out gyms...leveling up quick ..high power pokemons...if they look into your account and dont think it was being used that way and it was banned they may unban ....this is just my opinion cause yeah they could kill any account that don't use the official pokemongo app on the fly.

[cl3537]

Which part is "NEW" here?
I don't agree with the theory that "Niantic is able to detec unofficial API immediately", if that's the case, why do they bother to wait before banning those accts?
It's much easier for them to ban the acct once detected, rather than keep a record of botted accts.

Well that likely comes from their experience with Ingress, and previous comments they have made. If they were to instaban a bot or prevent it from using the API as they did earlier this month with UK6 checksum introduction then a team of hackers will just work once again to defeat whatever security they put into place. Its a lot easier to build a working bot that won't get banned if you know right away what gets you banned.

They know there will always be bots no matter what they do, so they work on managing the problem not eliminating it altogether. The 1000 Pokemon and 2000 Pokestops was definitely designed to slow down the advantage bots have and prevent them from being able to annoy dedicated players quite as much. With the new daily limits If they just do perm bans once or twice a month they can keep accounts at low enough levels that real players shouldn't be too disadvantaged.

[unknown6mon]

I actually agree with everything you said I was already thinking all the same things. I also think it might be possible to not only tell as soon as we login from anything other then the pokemon go app but I also think they might be able to tell when pokemon are being caught without a valid GPS signal coming from the pokemon go app.... Example when you open Pogo app on your phone and you are inside a building or turn location off the app clearly sees "GPS signal not found" I am no programming expert or GPS expert but I would think they would have the ability to tell when we are communicating with their servers from our accounts that we are catching a bunch of pokemon and pokestops without a valid GPS signal.

[PuppyPopper]

@CL

i like your theory. though I want to add a clause to it.

Niantic knows how much bots n botting is on and I do feel somewhere tiny bit they dont care much about it. Their issue is snipping. Snipping is heavy data outage at their server levels and if snipping is on that causes glitches with them.

Most first ban wave people had snipped either out of choice or out of curiosity once. And that itself was good enough to get them banned. I know some soft ban guys and they got softbanned cause of NOX useage, they werent perma banned in the wave that caught me. I like a stupid guy snipped once.

I am from Asia and in my country they still havent officially launched Pokemon, So after reaching level 29 legit, i snipped a Farfetchd to fill my pokedex and 1 week down i was banned. Where as the Nox user is still playing.

Just a theory - no disrespect

Damn it.. it's so hard to read this "snipping". It's single p only SNIPING damn it

[slopokher]

I actually agree with everything you said I was already thinking all the same things. I also think it might be possible to not only tell as soon as we login from anything other then the pokemon go app but I also think they might be able to tell when pokemon are being caught without a valid GPS signal coming from the pokemon go app.... Example when you open Pogo app on your phone and you are inside a building or turn location off the app clearly sees "GPS signal not found" I am no programming expert or GPS expert but I would think they would have the ability to tell when we are communicating with their servers from our accounts that we are catching a bunch of pokemon and pokestops without a valid GPS signal.

what do u classify as a valid gps signal ...check this Students Take Control of $80 Million Superyacht Using Fake GPS Signals

thats some real deal spoofing

[unknown6mon]

what do u classify as a valid gps signal ...check this Students Take Control of $80 Million Superyacht Using Fake GPS Signals

thats some real deal spoofing

Fake it was just a theory craft project

[wallydaza]

damn it.. It's so hard to read this "snipping". It's single p only sniping damn it

thank you!

[zorndyke]

Which part is "NEW" here?
I don't agree with the theory that "Niantic is able to detec unofficial API immediately", if that's the case, why do they bother to wait before banning those accts?
It's much easier for them to ban the acct once detected, rather than keep a record of botted accts.

which one better? banning level 30 or level 1 ?
imagine someone buying level 35 account, and in the next dayy.. poooff. the account is gone. the seller will have trust issue from his consumer.
creating level 1 is easy in just less a minute, but higher level ?
the reason is more psychological than technical.

you want technical detail about the difference between offcial app and rocket api data sends?
here it is :
[Issue] Fix protocol API. Or Niantic keeps banning users of 3rd party apps. Current public Rocket API is completely broken. * Issue #293 * NoxxDev/NecroBot * GitHub

[tumyeto]

which one better? banning level 30 or level 1 ?
imagine someone buying level 35 account, and in the next dayy.. poooff. the account is gone. the seller will have trust issue from his consumer.
creating level 1 is easy in just less a minute, but higher level ?
the reason is more psychological than technical.

you want technical detail about the difference between offcial app and rocket api data sends?
here it is :
[Issue] Fix protocol API. Or Niantic keeps banning users of 3rd party apps. Current public Rocket API is completely broken. * Issue #293 * NoxxDev/NecroBot * GitHub

TL;DR about the techincal detail about the rocket api?

[antz12345]

aww so cute.

How to spell snipping or sniping | Spelling-checker.com

Please check to know which side of world you are living on.

[comfirm12]

Which part is "NEW" here?
I don't agree with the theory that "Niantic is able to detec unofficial API immediately", if that's the case, why do they bother to wait before banning those accts?
It's much easier for them to ban the acct once detected, rather than keep a record of botted accts.

They want to upgrade their security duh.. Common sense