'Pokémon Go' Spoofing Ban: An update to stop GPS spoofing could be in the works

If you've been playing Pokémon Go regularly, you're probably aware that GPS spoofing is a major problem with the game, and there are no shortage of ways to spoof on your phone, unfortunately. However, it looks like Niantic might be taking some steps in the future to curtail — if not outright stop — the preponderance of spoofers that seem to hold sway over some high-level gyms.

Pokémon Go spoofing fix: Niantic Support Twitter account hints at anti-spoofing functionality coming to the game

As with most news-related Pokémon Go tips, a post on the Silph Road subreddit highlighted a Niantic Support employee's response to a player about GPS spoofing on their Twitter account.

Although, of course, we're not going to get a huge announcement about Niantic's overall strategy regarding spoofers and bot-users in-game, it's still nice to get affirmation that there's something coming to the game in the future that will hopefully curb these activities. Hopefully it'll come sooner rather than later, but we'll take what we can get.

You can, as always, report players for inappropriate gameplay using this form on Niantic's site, but make sure that someone is actually using spoofing techniques before you go and report them. If you notice that you're losing gyms under pretty dubious circumstances, such as getting booted out of a gym while you're the only person in the area or watching a recently taken gym get very quickly prestiged back to level 10 without seeing anyone, chances are you're dealing with spoofers.

However, it's best to err on the side of caution where this is concerned and not report someone without real evidence. The more false positives Niantic has to sift through, the harder it becomes for them to target spoofing accounts accurately, and until this anti-spoofing functionality goes live, they only have your tickets to go off of. So be smart about using them.

Either way, hopefully, it'll only be a short wait in between this frankly huge quality of life increase for most players and those big exciting updates CEO John Hanke promised in his Wired Germany interview. But, you know — baby steps.

More Pokémon Go news, updates, tips and tricks

Check out Mic's Pokémon Go guides on how to get stardust, how to determine how long it will take you to reach level 40, the kind of Pokémon you get from 10-kilometer eggs, how to create new PokéStops, how to maximize your chances of catching Pokémon and how PokéStops distribute Pokémon eggs. Also check out how to catch Gen 2 baby Pokémon, our analysis of post-balance update Chansey and Rhydon and everything you need to know about finding the long-awaited Pokémon Ditto.