Gotten warning message on official Pokemon Go APP in my new account, PF is detectable

Well I hate to be THAT guy, but that is EXACTLY what they are, random popups that even legit accounts are getting hit with, its the new captcha more or less. Captchas happened to legit and non legit accounts and everyone freaked out, but it didnt mean your account was banned, some did sure, but in this instance, its a scare tactic to try to stop 3rd party apps before trading comes along. So PLEASE stop fearing nothing, and please stop fueling fear. Its a scare tactic and is ignorable unless you do get banned. This is NOT exclusive to PF as the OP claims, and has hit many people legit and non legit alike.

As for the silly one who posted something I and Hatching put up ages ago, that was for something else and NOT relevant to this at all. Continued attempts at fearmongering of that nature will result in your removal from this community.

 

With all due respect, I have dozens of friends with legit accounts that never bot and not a SINGLE one of them got one of these messages. Same with my 100% legit account. Essentially everyone here got at least some of their accounts marked, and the rest probably will be soon enough.

To say they are unrelated is a statistical fallacy. It might not be pokefarmer's fault per se, but it's absolutely the case that "most" of the people getting these are people using third party apps. It's my fault that my cheat account is marked, I take full responsibility for that. But it is absolutely a result of using a third party app. I agree, that the "fear" is silly because we're all here with accounts that broke TOS and we knew what we were doing. But to claim it's unrelated or not relevant is just plain false.

 

With all due respect to say that dozens is a better sample than hudreds or thousands even is a bigger statistical fallacy. Yes most of them are indeed botters getting the error,m but so long as 1% is a margin of legit botters its a an error in detection. No actions are being taken at this time and its refutable. We have combed our coding with the finest tooth comb we can, and there is nothing missing on our end presently. We have to review each accounts actions ect ect to say for certain where the fault is, and since that cant be done in a timely or reasonable manner, we cannot put the fault with PF or the bots. What is causing any legit account to get flagged is the easier data to acquire to be honest.

 

Dozens is not an ideal sample, you're right. However when it's 0% of dozens it's pretty obvious to me that my account (my cheat account) got the message because of my behavior. Even if they're just marking me because I have a nearly full pokedex, they obviously have some heuristics that are working very well at finding us. I get the fact that you want people to keep using the bot, that's obvious. As a fellow Dev, I can say that I trust you've combed the code....but that doesn't mean they can't tell who we are. Even if it's something stupid like the old "altitude is always the same" issue that used to happen with the really old API, they're clearly watching.

 

When this is a new captcha method then I have a question:
Is this message pushed by the Server and need a confirmation by the client? In other words: Does PF need to agree to this message at every start up?

PS: The fearmongering is not intended. That happens when the customer/community has fear to get banned but there is no clarification by the vendor at all.
I thank you very much for your statement and appreciate your work. Now we know Bossland's position for this issue and that you are aware of it.

 

What's the chances the new third party app message is more of a detection of playing time and predictable activities and not so much bot/app detection. Let's be honest, you have to be extremely naive if you think Niantic doesn't suspect somethings up if you play for 4+ hours a day every day. Pausing or stopping for a few minutes randomly is moot. Who legitimately plays for 4 hour stretches EVERY DAY!??!?!?

 

Haha, right? "Human-like" behavior is something that no bot is ever truly going to achieve. The constant speed we travel at, the many consecutive hours. All you can really do is make it too expensive (resource-wise or financially) to find you. Let's face it, someone from Niantic probably has a license to the API usage, and could fairly easily write some reverse logic that queries exactly the common "slow and steady" bot behavior. At that point, even the randomness provided by pokefarmer and the other bots isn't going to be imperfect enough to fake being human.


That's one reason I tweak a setting or two each time I play using PF. Maybe one time I transfer all pokemon and recycle items immediately...one time maybe not. Change the speed, change the pokeball strategy a little...obviously it didn't help me evade the "3rd party warning" on my botting account this time though so maybe it's all for nothing and it's strictly based on number of hours played vs pokemon caught or something.

 

So you guys wanted official answers, then you are given them, and now it personally seems that you are just looking for ways to say that PF is no longer any good ort is detectable (which is a lie) So please, tell me, what exactly you want from us? What answers are you looking for? Or are you by chance looking for an argument? Because right now I can't tell.

 

We understand that the "official answer" is that you think PF is fine, so we accept that as your statement. Nowhere here are we saying not to bot to anyone else. That's everyone's own choice. We're discussing what the other side of the game is right now, what is Niantic doing and how are they identifying us. You don't work for Niantic, and have no idea why they are putting out a warning. It may or may not be a shot across the bow, or a distraction, or just a fun game for them. Who knows! If you think there's not a guy over there at Niantic playing chess against bots or running queries to find us then I've got a bridge to sell you. Maybe you'll win, maybe he will!

The whole point of a forum is to discuss. Don't take it personally, no one here is blaming anyone. I have no definitive proof that Niantic knows I use PF...but they know my account is screwy. There's also no proof that I (and hundreds of other people) are not on the precipice of a ban wave. That's the fun of discussing it...if we do get banned...what led to the ban? If we don't, then we'll all be happily botting forever. I don't want a refund, and I've never once blamed anyone but myself for my bot account getting flagged.

As a fellow Dev, all I can say is that the most important lesson in life to learn is that a bug in your code or someone saying that they disagree with your code is not a personal insult. Don't get offended by discussions in the forums, be a constructive part of the conversation or don't...but don't invent a witch hunt that doesn't exist.

I'm doing my own part to avoid the guy(s) at Niantic who are trying to catch us...thus I change my settings, bot in a smart way, and mix things up. I happen to believe that they do have a way to see that it's not the official client, but again...that would just mean that they are actually doing their jobs. I don't blame PF for that...I look forward to the next move in the chess game of botting...and hope that it's Niantic that gets put in check mate.

 

CAc, I apologize, I didn't mean any such accusations and truly didn't mean any personal attack on you or anyone associated with PF. I personally think PF is the cat's meow, PERIOD. I love a good cat & mouse game by all means. The ultimate cat & mouse game was black Sunday by DirecTV.

 

This above is an important question. I haven't seen it being answered. Can a mod answer this please?

When we all log into the game with our phones, we get the warning message, and we click "Got it" to make it go away. On PF though, I don't see this message and PF starts and works as usual.

The question is, how is PF handling this pop up? Is it automatically clicking "Got it", and is that why we never see it, or is it somehow bypassing it?

If it is bypassing it, does it mean we are getting flagged for not clicking on it?
If this question can be answered I think it will give us a bit more understanding of what's going on at this part.

 

Exactly. I am hoping for the answer too.

Does anyone that gotten the message but are still using Pokefarmer? I got the message and am still looking for answers on the forum.

Thanks!

 

I'm still using Pf but in 2 low accounts, level 23 & 27 (both got the warning message). No problem at this moment, we`ll see...

 

I will quote one of our devs when I say this, "The message is client side" meaning its not expecting a response back. I hope this addresses your fear/question.

 

Yes, this does answer the question for me at least. Thanks for looking into it. It does help reduce concerns.

 

Happy to help where I can

 

Thank you

 

I received this message before updating PF and I still have it today. What should I do? When I do not use PF, will it disappear and my account will be fully functional?
I am now limited to pokemon spawnes, I see and I can only catch the most basic ones (Rattata, Spinarak, Pidgey, Murkrow). I d'ont know if it does not limit me even in raid battles, I can not catch anything, also L1 Croconaw from 11 attempts?

 

it sounds like a shadow ban. try playing legit on that account for 5-9ish days and see if that helps. After that look for a post from Bolan about how he uses PF.

 

i dont use pf at all and i got the warning all i use is fake gps pro. they are hitting spoofers world wide if you jump from a location to distance of half of the USA you get flagged after doing it a few times in 1 day