Other Legit players also getting banned.Stay away from gym

Infamous-Ash · August 16, 2016

Long time lurker here who didn't feel compelled to post until now. So over the past 2 weeks or so I've traveled pretty significantly and been to a few major cities on the east and west coast visiting college friends and moving in for graduate school. I have a level 26 account which I've worked hard to develop with what little time I have. About two days ago however I started getting the servers not found error which from my research seems to indicate a perma ban. I've never once used a bot or spoofer or any other cheating methods but for some reason Niantic decided to just ban my account. My only theory is that I've been traveling so much to major cities and collecting so much xp in short amounts of time that my account got flagged somehow. Of course, submitting an appeal to Niantic is next to worthless given their abysmal customer support. So basically I'm stuck back with a level 1 account and a pretty sour opinion of Niantic. Am I the only one who's having this issue?

Edit 1: Since people keep asking, I didn't use any third party apps like IV checkers or radars.

Edit 2: I've read other posts and people are saying that if you report someone who's controlling a gym you can get their account banned. Thinking back I did take over a suburban gym and leave a cp 2000+ lapras on it. It was at least two days before I got banned. Then again I didn't open the app much close to when I got banned so who knows. All I can really do is theorize until Niantic offers us some clarification on the banning system. My main goal with this post is to raise awareness that it is possible to get banned on a legit account, and these are some variables that may have influenced that ban.

Edit 3: I realize I'm throwing the word ban around a little loosely given that we don't know what exactly constitutes a "ban" at this point. However, I will continue to use ban as a stand in word for being unable to access your account for a 24 hr + period and receiving "failed to get game data from server" on the loading screen. At this moment in time there is a degree of consensus that this message indicates a ban though people have valid counter arguments to this.

source: reddit