INFORMATION TO BE UPDATED WITH CLEARER DETAILS AS MORE BECOMES KNOWN
An interesting new field has appeared in the network traffic of Pokemon Go which may yet again change the landscape of the game - so much so that I decided it would warrant a new blog post - my first in over 2 years.
(some information removed as I'm not sure how uniquely identifiable it may be!)
Although it does not appear to be being used at present, it would seem that - at least in theory - Niantic fully intend to use this new field to identify Pokemon which have been caught using illegitimate measures such as spoofing/sniping.
What is not yet known is how Niantic might implement this, and why they are not using the existing is_bad field.
A potential outcome could be similar to when a "slash ban" was introduced in 2016, where Pokemon from "botted" accounts were rendered useless for anything other than a Pokedex entry, as below:
It is yet to be seen whether such a slash (or otherwise) will appear before the trade on the original account, or on the account to which the Pokemon was traded - and whether or not this effect will show up immediately or take several days/weeks to appear.
I would like to think that the receiving accounts will not be penalised for the actions of their trading partners, however as we know Niantic have been ruthless in the past - could this be another 7 day ban type?
The new field is a very welcome addition to the game. Since trading was announced the tactics of spoofers have drastically changed - many people will now not risk their main account, and instead use a "spare" or "throw away" account to spoof and catch rare Pokemon, which they then trade back to themselves on their main legitimate account.
Niantic are likely fully aware of the spoof-to-trade tactics we are now seeing and I can see something being implemented in an update to the game very soon.
