The cooldown rule
Niantic's anti-cheat is built around one idea: a human cannot teleport. If you catch a Pokemon in Atlanta and then catch one in Tokyo two minutes later, the game knows that is impossible and freezes your account for a while. This is the soft ban.
The cooldown grows with distance. Under 1 km is free. A 10 km jump costs a minute. A 50 km jump costs around 15 minutes. A transatlantic jump caps at about 2 hours. During the cooldown, Pokemon escape and PokeStops won't spin.
Use route mode, not teleport
The cleaner way to play is to never trigger the cooldown at all. Move at a believable speed and the game treats you like any other player walking around.
PinDrift's route mode walks (5 km/h), bikes (18 km/h), or drives (50 km/h) between waypoints. Walk and Bike are safe for catching. Drive is for getting between cities. Loop a route to hatch eggs overnight.
What gets you soft-banned
Rapid jumps right before catching. Raiding the same boss from a different city every 5 minutes. Catching the same rare species 40 times in a row. Walking 1000 km in a day. Accounts that last on a spoofer look boring: daily walks, some catches, some misses, occasional travel.
FAQ
Will I get banned?
If you teleport across continents and catch a Pokemon right away, yes, you will get a soft ban. If you use route mode at walking, biking, or driving speeds and respect the cooldown chart, the game cannot tell you apart from a real player. Niantic does not permaban first offenses.
Speed limit for catching?
Roughly 10.5 km/h for catch and spin actions. Above that, Pokemon escape and PokeStops will not spin. The walk preset (5 km/h) and bike preset (18 km/h) keep you in the safe range. The drive preset is for traveling between regions, not for catching.
Multi-account OK?
Niantic allows one account per player. Spoofing across many accounts is the fastest way to escalate from soft ban to permaban. Stick to one account and walk it at human speeds.
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