Doing Wayfarer reviews may result in a permanent PoGo ban with no prior warnings
tl;dr If you value your PoGo account and are a cautious person, I advise that you AVOID doing any Niantic Wayfarer reviewing. As I've learned the hard way, there's a chance that you can be falsely banned for "Review circle participation", and this will also result in a permanent ban of your PoGo account.
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UPDATE: The issue has been resolved, and my account has been unbanned. I'll leave this post up in case it's ever useful to someone in the future. The solution is to make a post on the Wayfarer forums, which thankfully has real Niantic employees. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com
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I tried to open PoGo yesterday morning and was shocked to find that I had been permanently banned. Niantic sent me an email with the following statement:
>Following an internal investigation performed by our team, we have confirmed that your recent behavior has violated one or more policies
As a result of this violation, your Wayfarer and Niantic game account(s) have been permanently banned.
You have violated the following policies: Review circle participation. For more details, look for previous emails sent by noreply@nianticlabs.com.
After googling, this apparently means that Niantic believes I've colluded with other Wayfarer reviewers to create fake Pokestops. (For the record, this is 100% false.) Interesting, the email tells me to check for previous emails sent by noreply@nianticlabs.com, but I've never received any other emails from that address. This was the first and only.
The email above also linked to this help page: https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/21-wayfarer/faq/4275-wayfarer-abuse-enforcement-ladder-policy
Ironically, it outlines a series of escalating disciplinary actions for people abusing the Wayfarer review system. But in my case, they skipped all the steps with warnings and temp bans, and they went right to a permanent ban! It's just surreal to me.
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Some background info:
I started playing PoGo in 2016, not too long after the game came out. My account has always been in good standing, and I've never received a ban, warning, or any kind of infraction before now. From 2018-2020, I was a very prolific POI/Waypoint submitter on both Ingress and PoGo. I also did some reviewing on OPR/Wayfarer, but not a whole lot. All of the POIs I added to the game were real, and I never tried to add a fake one. I was well-regarded in my local community.
Because of Covid, I unfortunately took a long break from the game. I only came back last year, around August. Since I've been back, I've hardly touched Wayfarer at all. I've submitted less than 10 POIs, and I only did a little bit of reviewing -- just enough to earn maybe two Upgrades or so. I've been very busy this year, so I haven't even been on the Wayfarer website since ~January 2026.
So... why was I suddenly banned just now? I really don't know. I haven't done anything wrong, and this came right out of the blue. My only guess (and this is pure speculation) is that during some of my reviewing 5+ months ago, I might have voted to accept a POI/Waypoint that was actually fake without me realizing it. And then maybe after it was reported as a fake Pokestop ingame, Niantic could have gone back and banned any reviewers who voted to approve it? Alternatively, I suppose this could be some kind of AI-driven banwave mistake.
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After learning yesterday that I was permanently banned, I submitted a ban appeal and also tried to talk to Niantic Support. They have frankly been no help at all. They ignored everything I said. All they did was confirm that I've been permanently banned and say that there would be no further updates.
I tried to ask for clemency. I pointed out that my account has always been in good standing, that I have never received any warnings, and that it's pretty unreasonable to permanently ban my PoGo account for *alleged* misconduct on the Wayfarer website. I asked them if they could downgrade it to a temporary ban (even a long one), but Niantic Support ignored me once again. Depressing.
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Anyway, this is my sincere warning to all of you: It's not a good idea to do Wayfarer reviews anymore. Your PoGo account is at risk of being permanently banned even if you haven't done anything wrong.
I'm aware that cheaters and rulebreakers often proclaim their innocence or try to downplay what they did, so I don't blame anyone if you doubt my story. I can only affirm that everything I've said here is true. My hopes of being unbanned are pretty low at this point (I didn't realize before just how awful Niantic Support is...), so I'm mainly looking to warn other players. Any advice would still be appreciated though. I would also like to know if anyone else here has experienced something similar.
Thank you.
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UPDATE: The issue has been resolved, and my account has been unbanned. I received this message from a Niantic employee on the Wayfarer community forum:
>Thank you for your patience while we looked into this. We have re-evaluated your appeal and successfully lifted the ban on your Wayfarer and Pokémon GO accounts. It was an error due to overlapping details in similar sequential emails. We apologize for the inconvenience caused.
For anyone who experiences something like this in the future, I recommend making a post on the Wayfarer forum: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com