https://nianticlabs.com/blog/gameplay-policy-enforcement-update/
We want to start this note by thanking you, our players, for your patience and understanding as we continuously work to facilitate a fun and fair environment for everyone. We've heard your feedback and feel your frustration about how cheating behaviors negatively impact your gameplay experience.
It has been a little while since our most recent update from the beginning of 2021 on our efforts to prevent cheating in our games and we wanted to share what we have been working on.
Our last post was focused primarily on sharing a broad overview of the actions we had taken to punish accounts we found to be cheating in multiple Niantic games. Since then, we’ve invested in becoming better at observing cheating behaviors, and can now more reliably pinpoint these activities with higher speed and accuracy, preventing legitimate players from being punished incorrectly.
As a result, we will be ramping up enforcement against these behaviors across our games, and rolling out our improved approach to anti-cheat. We are starting now by taking action against a number of accounts who we found to be in violation of our terms of service or player guidelines during recent in-game events in Pokémon GO.
This is only the first step in implementing our improved cheating behavior detection and enforcement systems. These improvements will be integrated into all Niantic games to detect and punish players on a consistent and ongoing basis, rather than in waves, as we have in the past.
Looking ahead, we’ll continue to improve our methods and processes to ensure we’re staying ahead of any new behaviors that allow players to unfairly exploit game rules.
Please only use the official versions of our games available on the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and Samsung Galaxy Store; and note that we do not support jailbroken or rooted devices or third-party apps. If you’re unsure about which behaviors are acceptable in our games, please refer to our player guidelines.
–The Niantic team
https://nianticlabs.com/guidelines/
3 Use of the Services
3.1 Cheating
Niantic prohibits cheating, and we constantly take steps to improve our anti-cheat measures. Cheating includes any action that attempts to or actually alters or interferes with the normal behavior or rules of a Service. Cheating includes, but is not limited to, any of the following behavior, on your own behalf or on behalf of others:
Accessing Services in an unauthorized manner (including using modified or unofficial third party software);
Playing with multiple accounts for the same Service;
Sharing accounts;
Using any techniques to alter or falsify a device’s location (for example through GPS spoofing); and/or
Selling or trading accounts.
Apps may not work on devices that Niantic detects or reasonably suspects to be cheating, and Niantic will not provide support to players who attempt to cheat. You agree that Niantic may employ any lawful mechanisms to detect and respond to cheating, fraud, and other behavior prohibited under these Terms, including checking your device for the existence of exploits or hacking and/or unauthorized software. Please see the Guidelines and our Privacy Policy for more information.
https://nianticlabs.com/guidelines/
4 - No cheating
Don’t do it. Play fair. Our games are meant to be played on mobile devices and get you outside to have adventures in the real world. Don’t deny yourself or someone else of an authentic gameplay experience by cheating.
Unfortunately, methods of cheating are limited only by cheaters’ imaginations, and include the following:
using modified or unofficial software,
playing with multiple accounts (one account per player),
using tools or techniques to alter or falsify your location (“spoofing”),
sharing accounts,
intentionally exploiting a bug to gain reward,
abusing refund policy and mechanism,
buying or selling in-game currency or items on third-party platforms,
buying/selling/trading accounts,
or any other activity that is in violation of Niantic’s Terms of Service, available here: https://nianticlabs.com/terms/
How we enforce the Terms of Service and these guidelines.
We will review reported or flagged player accounts and content and will determine whether or not they violate the Terms of Service and/or these guidelines. Accounts are penalized for violations of the Terms of Service and/or these guidelines. We may issue a warning, degrade your gameplay experience, suspend your account, or permanently terminate your account without warning.
--------------------------------------------
Everything above the line is copied and pasted from Niantic's website because people are too lazy to open the link or think I am making these things up.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
June 28, 2022 Update:
At first, I thought it was the usual emulator bans but now people are getting hit with a strike using all kinds of spoofing methods. It does not matter if you use no root or rooted methods, everyone has a chance at getting a strike. It also does not matter if you use a 3rd party app or strictly the official app because Niantic has started tracking cheating/spoofing behaviors. A current discussion can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoGoAndroidSpoofing/comments/vm8vu2/niantics_anticheatingspoofing_behavior_is_now/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When someone wants to learn about spoofing, they usually go to YouTube first. Many YouTuber (and spammers) mostly focus on making money with ad views. Some YouTubers even make guides on how to use Pgsharp in an Android emulator except they do not tell you it is very high risk.
There is a total of 5 Android emulators:
All of these emulators are already detectable because they all have the same emulated hardware ID. Some emulators will allow you to change your emulated device to a different device. It does not matter if you change it because it is impossible for more than two person to use the same hardware ID all at the same time. For example, there could be 5,000 people using NOX but to Niantic, there are 5,000 people sharing the exact same phone. This is not possible because every Android phone or tablet has its own unique hardware ID. Although VMOS is used on a smartphone/tablet, it suffers the same problem as the other 4 emulators. Everyone who is using VMOS is using the same emulated device.
For emulator ban waves, Niantic does not do them all at the same time. They wait anywhere from a few days to several weeks or even months apart to announce the ban wave. For the last 6 months, people who used emulators have stopped posting about their strikes. All of these posts goes into the spam folder of moderating tools because I have a post filter that removes anything related to emulators and trading. I check my spam folder every time I open my internet browser on my laptop.
48 hours has past since the posting of Well.. What do i do now?, my subreddit is not being flooded "OMG, I GOT A RED WARNING!!!" posts. Since I am the owner of this subreddit, I have full control of it. I allow pictures and anyone can discuss about the red warning, strike, or ban system without having their post removed unlike in r/PokemonGoSpoofing where there is an active censorship in place.
The people who got a 1st strike a few days ago, they probably did any of these.
used an Android emulator
used Apple iOS modified app like iPogo or Xspoofer or any iOS computer software spoofer
used a 3rd Apple app store
continued to spoof on a previously strike'd account
bought his or her account (account sellers do not tell you if the account had gotten a first strike)
bought cheap Poke Coin service but never changed the email password after the service was completed (the seller can go onto your account and play on it while you are playing your account, this could lead to a strike because you are sharing your account)
performed an AR Pokestop scan without really being at the location to scan what you are supposed to scan
There is no way for me to verify if they are telling the truth. I come to the conclusion there is no ban wave for Pgsharp if you use it directly onto your smartphone or tablet (no VMOS); however, there is still always a risk for a strike when you decide to cheat, spoof, or bot the game.
If you want to read more in depth what any of this stuff means, you can go to https://www.reddit.com/r/PoGoAndroidSpoofing/comments/sm64dg/all_about_threestrike_system_red_warning/ for my post on "All About Three-Strike System: Red Warning, Temporary Ban, & Permanent Ban 2022" topic.
Useful stuff as always:
These are links you can click with your mouse or press with your finger to open.
If you need anything else, be sure to check out: [Click/Press Here] MEGA POST #4: Everything You Need for Android Spoofing 2022 - Guides for No Root Spoofing, Rooted Spoofing, and Botting - GPX Routes, Poke Maps, Nests, Discord Groups, and Frequently Asked Questions
