With Niantic swinging down the banhammer for all those who were spoofing, hacking or otherwise finding ways to cheat on Pokemon Go, now those measures have backfired on some legitimate players who have been locked out of their games.
It started when a report surfaced on Reddit where a player reported getting banned after travelling across some major cities across the US in a short period of time. Said user had a level 26 account and posted a high-CP Pokemon at a nearby gym before it happened.
However, this doesn’t look like an isolated incident, with over 200 individual comments and similar cases cropping up since then. Travelling salesmen, members of the military and even those on vacation have met with similar ends.
As for why they’re getting banned, its quite possible its a glitch with the anti-cheat algorithm that thinks that they might be using a GPS spoof to catch Pokemon, as opposed to actually travelling those distances. Before this, 3rd party apps that allowed you to change your location were fairly common, letting you jump to any location around to world to reap Pokemon you otherwise couldn’t find otherwise.
There’s also a possibility that Pokemon Go’s ban algorithm is tied to “suspicious activity reports” from individual players; where reports would get you banned regardless of your actions. This is a bit too open for abuse for our taste.
However, Niantic does have a system to appeal bans so if you feel that this has unfairly happened to you, there’s at least a way to fix the situation.
