Pokemon GO Tips and Tricks -Updated: Pokemon Go User Gets An Entire Country Banned From Game

Source: Niantics

Edited: We apologize for the misleading headline.

Niantic Labs, the developer of Pokemon Go, responded to the rampant bot use by automatically banning any player who uses the game. While Niantic there's no official statement on how they ban players, they might target both IP addresses and actual player accounts. IP bans are different than player bans in that they allow players to log into Pokemon Go, but no Pokemon, gyms, or PokeStops appear within the game.

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A Redditor on /r/pokemongodev [a community that developed many of the bot programs], decided to test a theory on IP bans with surprising results. The redditor allegedly used several burner SIM cards to launch several thousand simultaneous scans of the Pokemon Go servers, similar to what services such as PokeVision did in order to display Pokemon locations. All of the scans were tied to a specific national IP address, used by the cell phone company Proximus [Belgium's largest cell phone service provider].

After running the test, Niantic eventually flagged the IP and banned it. This inadvertently led to Niantic banning every single user who had a Proximus's cell coverage, as banning Proximus's national IP address meant that all Proximus users could no longer use their mobile data to access the game. It's likely whoever flagged the IP address was unaware that it wasn't a private/personal IP address.

The Redditor who allegedly caused the ban later claimed that he didn't actually go through with the test and that Niantic pre-emptively banned the entire country of Belgium after reading his posts.

Update:
From Reddit:

Comment from discussion Pokemon Go User Gets An Entire Country Banned From Game [Biggest network Proximus].

Niantic has reopened the connection to Pokémon GO for users of the Proximus network this Saturday morning. Proximus is claiming that Niantic actived a protection mechanism due to misuse of anonymous prepaid cards through simultaneous data connections.

Although, banning cheaters should be a priority for Pokemon Go, but maybe a country-wide ban is a bit absurd?

Reference: Pokemon Go User Gets An Entire Country Banned From Game