How would one avoid being caught for account sharing?

[dalekcaan1963]

Basically, I want to do a small amount of account sharing: A friend of mine lives in a relatively rural area with barely any Pokemon or Pokestops, so I wanted to help out since I live in the city and a five minute walk can pretty much fill up the item bag. I was going to go ahead with that, but I heard people can be banned (not sure if only soft bans or if people get hard banned too, and if my own account would be affected).

I'm guessing it would guess from the sudden change of location; an account logged in at the UK being signed into in Australia five minutes later would be naturally suspicious after all. Would we be able to avoid the risk of bans by having my friend just sign out for a couple of hours before I sign in so it looks like they just travelled here, or is that overkill? Would using a different device also be a red flag?

 

[VisualJae]

Sharing a single account between multiple people is technically against the guidelines set by Niantic, so you're doing so at your own risk. FYI it's not uncommon for this rule to be enforced as many game companies have similar rules.

Each device has its own unique ID and model ID, so if someone really wants to investigate, the proof is right there. I can't say if anyone has been permanently banned for sharing accounts, but many players have already been banned for all sorts of reasons so far.

 

[Phoenixstarz]

Could depend on how many red flags you set off, there's a lot of players probably more urgent for them to deal with but I expect if you continue then eventually they will catch up with you. Being on 2 different devices (at different times) isn't going to be an issue. But if you log in too quickly between locations then that may flag up something.
Mainly though you are putting your own account at risk, if (or when) they investigate and ban (even it's not a perms ban) you may not get your account back for some time, niantic do not seem to be quick to respond to messages and since in your case you are clearly breaking the rules they might not be lenient

 

[dalekcaan1963]

Does that mean, as long as the shared account is 'rested' between logins, that there's no risk? Specifically, if my friend were to log out for 2-3 hours, then I log in and do a few pokestops, then log out for another 2-3 hours then my friend logs back in? In theory, I can't see how that would be differentiated from someone travelling there, unless they detect that one location uses one device while the other uses another device and consider that suspicious behaviour, but that sounds a bit of a stretch.

 

[Phoenixstarz]

Does that mean, as long as the shared account is 'rested' between logins, that there's no risk?

No, however if the 2 devices used were near enough in distance to each other that it is likely that the same person could conceivably have logged in then you are LESS likely to get caught, but is it really worth it considering if you do get caught you WILL get banned possibly permanently

 

[dalekcaan1963]

Would there be a risk to my own personal account? It would be just helping out on my friend's account a little so I wouldn't be sharing my own account with anyone. Is my personal account safe if a ban gets imposed for account sharing on my friend's one?

 

[Phoenixstarz]

Would there be a risk to my own personal account? It would be just helping out on my friend's account a little so I wouldn't be sharing my own account with anyone. Is my personal account safe if a ban gets imposed for account sharing on my friend's one?

Yes there would be a risk to your own account, if your friends account gets banned then they will likely look at any accounts linked to those devices/IPs. You might get lucky you might not but it's not really going to be worth the risk

 

[VisualJae]

Would there be a risk to my own personal account? It would be just helping out on my friend's account a little so I wouldn't be sharing my own account with anyone. Is my personal account safe if a ban gets imposed for account sharing on my friend's one?

Pro tip for online gaming: assume anything you do with a game that can be interpreted as circumventing its intended design can be grounds for account action. Bugs, exploits, etc. all count.

In this case, it's black and white as Niantic specifically lists "account sharing" as a bannable offense. It's just up to you the player whether or not you believe you can get away with it.