Trainers, reports are coming in that players are getting their accounts stolen and it looks like Niantic can’t do anything about it.
Many players are reporting of getting their accounts stolen and the person/s who is/are stealing the accounts are requesting of deleting the previous Trainer nickname and replace it with one o their own. These ‘thieves’ are also changing the previous email sign in info and replacing it with their own.
The players who lost their account have contacted Niantic Support and got the following reply – If you don’t have access to the email address associated with a Pokemon Go account, it wouldn’t be possible to login. We wouldn’t be able to change the login credentials of an account from our end.
Ta1cius started a discussion on behalf of his friend who lost his account and here is the story:
I am posting this on behalf of a friend of mine who recently lost his account, I’m hoping that if this gains enough traction that somebody will notice and be able to do help in any way possible in an attempt to help us recover the account.
” Account name – 01ALEJANDROWEN Level 40. Started playing 7th of July 2016. Played for 2 months until level 23 and the starting playing again November 2017 when Raikou first appeared in raids up until now. 60m+ exp and counting. Have invested easily quadruple digits money wise and countless hours walking around raiding, catching etc.
Friday 25th Sept 2019- I couldn’t get into my (Google) account, had a new error pop up reading ‘Unable to sign in. Please check this account still exists and you have correctly selected New or Returning player. Obviously quite a shock as I’ve never seen this before. Immediately starting looking up ways that could help me sign back in. Found a thread that mentioned I could sign into my account through ‘New Player’ and that it won’t overwrite the current account with a new one. (Of course it did) My immediate state of panic was that my game file had been completely lost.
So I contacted Niantic in hopes that they could help me. A support bot took me though step by step and told me to wait for a reply. Saturday 26th Sept 2019- Niantic responded with that my account was associated with a different email that was it my own. This was an outlook email, not my google email. (Due to data protection, they couldn’t show the first half of the email as for all they know I could be a hacker myself) By this point my friends have told me my account is still there on their friends list. They can sent gifts, start up a trade window and send battle requests.
Over the course of the weekend I was sending though multiple help requests to Niantic with little to no outcome. Only receiving roughly the same email reading they could do anything about it because it breaches their privacy and data bits and bobs (of course). I had also sent in a request form for the small account that had been created with my current gmail to be deleted, in hopes that once that account had gone I could possibly log back in to my level 40.
Alas this was not the answer. Monday 30th Sept 2019- I received the worst email I could imagine. ‘Hello Trainer, Thank you for contacting us. From your previous message, I see that you have replied with the deletion request code to delete this Trainer Nickname “Dnwnxwj” and we are unable to find the account with this Trainer Nickname “01ALEJANDROWEN” ‘ I was also followed with messages from people that had me on their friends lists that my account was gone.
I am now led to believe my account is in one of two situations. 1. It was bugged out and deleted. 2. It was hacked by someone, who has changed the email assigned to it, changed the nickname and deleted all of the people on the friends list who I had once had and is now using it for themselves. I really am looking for some help, and everything would be highly appreciated if this could get some traction and/or someone from Niantic/POGO WHOEVER could please help me. I am a long term fan and I support this game so much, I’ve made so many close friendships with people, so many fond and fantastic memories. I can’t just have this hole in my life from loosing all the progression and Pokémon I have earned.”
According to Ta1cius, he is now in the process of recovering the account thanks to Indigo. He added that he will share an update once they solve the problem.
His friend joined the discussion and confirmed that he got an email from Niantic employee who explains that the account is on a temporary hold.
This is the reason we should use safe passwords and 2-Factor authentication. We hope to see a positive outcome and hopefully, they will get their accounts back.
There are more reports of this kind, and hopefully, Niantic will be able to find a solution. Take a look below:
I come to you with sad news
A friend of mine had their google account accessed from an unknown source, the person then proceeded to steal both a Pokemon go account and a wizards unite account that were tied to this google account.
The Pokemon go account has now been removed from everyone’s friends list so proves it’s not just an incorrect pasword or email address issue
This person has put in a lot of time and purchased coins like many of us have which is now lost, they had almost 100 raid passes and lots of coins
Niantic are saying it’s out of their control and have confirmed the accounts are registered to another gmail and have a new trainer name
Netflix are excellent at resolving this kind of issue but it appears niantic don’t Care
This isn’t a story about how to secure an account but is a warning that it’s very easy to lose an account and for Niantic to say they cannot do anything is an absolute scandal.
Posted by thumbandit
I am also posting about my son’s account that was stolen 4 days ago. Tried to log on only to receive a “Unable to login” message. I contacted Niantic support by email twice and received ZERO response. So I then reached out to their Twitter support and received the attached message. As you can see they acknowledge the fact my account was compromised, but were unwilling to help me recover the account by reverting the changes to the linked email accounts.
All of my family’s email accounts are set up with two-step verification and we received no notifications of an intruder login. No notifications of an email change or password change. Just woke up one day and the Pokemon Go account had it’s linked emails changed to some emails I do not recognize.
Any help with getting this matter escalated directly to someone at Niantic willing to help would be much appreciated.
Posted by xChamber
This has happened to me as well. Level 39, spent many hours and $$ on the game. I went to login and got the “please check this account exists ” message. I emailed Niantic immediately, they could not find my trainer name or email linked to the account. They said they could not help due to the fact they could not find information associated with my email. They said there was no way to see logs of account links being changed.
Finally, I found an old discord post with my Trainer ID. Excellent, I thought. This is a non-changeable ID that I can supply them with. They said they could not track by Trainer ID (what??!). I sent a friend request to the Trainer ID and found the new trainer name my account was under. I sent this to Niantic. They responded with the account’s email information (with only two letters of the email), but said they could not see past account history, whether it was linked to mine previously or not (are you serious?). They are refusing to help. I feel pretty helpless, I am an avid Pokemon fan and have spent immeasurable effort and time on the game. I still love Pokemon, but if Niantic won’t or can’t recover the account, I don’t think i’ll be playing again. It is too much of an investment wasted if they can’t recover it.
This has happened to me as well and the account name is my actual name, I sent a pic of my ID and still nothing can be done.
Same thing happen to me…sooo pissed…i worked on this account since 2018…was on level 34… since November of 2019 I can’t sign in and now all my friends and family are showing that it’s under someone else’s name so they hacked into my account change them all of my information and what sucks is I can’t get ahold of anyone in Niantic to help me they really don’t care I can’t believe I put all my time and effort into a product and game and spent money and nobody cares
Same thing happened to me. We have rights, we spent money and our valuable time we cannot get back ever. And Niantic made billions and too lazy to care their app can be easily hacked. I say we band together and do a class action law suit against Niantic and get our accounts back and make Niantic have better security measures!
yes im only like 16 but i got hacked and will do anything for my account back Niantic refuses to help ans something ought to be done about their laziness
I know I shouldn’t have but back in 2019 I bought a pokemon go account from someone on Ebay. It was level 20 at the time. I brought that account up to level 38, spent a lot of time and money on it. It was a level 38 when the person I bout it from (lawrpete64) on Ebay took it back and changed the email on me. I tried contacting Niantic and they basically told me I was out of luck, that I needed the email for the account. Well how am I supposed to know that when they changed it???? The account is StormyStalker and I am from Clearwater Florida. For a while it looked like the account was banned, as I did raise a lot heck with Niantic trying to get it back. Now it is in use again (my son still has the account in his friends list) so we can see that it is being played again. I would really like my account back. When I bought the account I was provided with the email coaxgerardo@gmail.com. I immediately set up the two step verification and change the trainer name to StormyStalker. If I can’t have my account back, then it should be banned. I spend a lot of time and money on this account. I’m furious.
Hi Lea,
I also bought an account (for raids, not as primary) from the same guy, “lawrpete64”, long vanished from ebay, and lost it about a year later. The account was sold again to a person in NY (I saw a new nickname and others got gifts from NY) and I’m quite sure that those accounts are made to get stolen, or were stolen in the first place anyway.
This guy sold these accounts on eBay with an Google-account but they also have an invisible (thanks Niantic!) PTC account. You don’t need the Google account to control the account, the PTC account is the one that is important. So this guy waits some time (for Paypal etc.), disconnects from eBay and then logs into the hidden PTC accounts, disconnects the Google or Facebook accounts and resells the now stronger and therefor more expensive accounts a second or even third time. DO NOT BUY ANY ACCOUNTS WITHOUT FULL ACCESS TO THE PTC ACCOUNT! Yes, all capital letters, because this very important…
So, either take this to court (eBay and Paypal then must give the real Names), but it’s unlikely that the real names are real anyway. Or get angry about this terrible PTC-account-policy by Niantic and Nintendo and start a fresh, own account.
Has anyone had any success with retrieving their accounts or is it no use to keep looking for help? I had my level 40 account compromised. It was a PTC account and the account got hacked, email and password changed without any notification. Niantic says that without the email nothing can be done even though I provided the trainer code. The account is still active on other trainer’s friend list but with a new trainer name. Can anyone help us? I feel so sick over this.
Now it’s my turn. My account was stolen by someone I don’t know. He/she change 2 times the email. And remove my others account. I tried to add my stolen account and he accepted 1 of my account. And now he/she actively use my account. I tried to get help.from.niantic buat what they says about fun, fair and safe exp was a lie. It is not safe amd not fun if your account was stolen.
How can I be noted if you find a way to retrieve your account?
Having the exact same problem been playing since 2016 spent many £££ and Niantic don’t care need help………
My account was hacked yesterday.
Google and Facebook login were linked to my account and I use them separately on 2 separate ‘phones, i.e. never use 2 login methods on one ‘phone.
I managed to retrieve my account through Pokémon Trainers Club as that account was set up using a different email address than the one linked to PoGo log in.
Don’t know how the hacker got into my account.
i just got my account stolen few days back before the pokemon home trading came to pogo. in my friends discord server he was telling that he would add meltan box if i gave my account to him to link to his nintendo switch but after few mins i got error msg of not existing ur account . i though i was banned and i saw that i was scammed by someone.i sent req to the ninatic about the account stolen and even sent the the current stolen acc name change with the same trainer code.if they could possibly find out there email account i could login into there acc to take it back.the current trainer name on stolen account is 1WAlkALOt.and code is 6742 2801 3178.
Do had anyone had any success in getting the accounts back? My level 40 account was just stolen from me yesterday. All of my friends were deleted. So I have no way of knowing what is going on.
I had mine hacked as well. This group posing as a pokemon go help group looked like it was involved with niantic. They had a page on fb and they were doing this contest for a free kanto ticket. They posted pics of previous winners and even had comments thanking them for the prize. So it seemed legit. Anyway through the contest they get ur account info so thinking it’s niantic and seeing proof of winners y not right. Wrong. They stole my account blocked me and renamed my account. My wife nicknamed me husband on her account so we saw the new account is now some Shiny hunter. Dudes running around with my hard work my shinies. Over three years of work in that account and mocking it by naming himself shinyhunter please. Anyway I traced my google maps on all devices connected. So loser in india is out playing as me. Sure I fell for the trap but niantic u gotta step up ur game cuz they r.
I had to create a new Pokemon Go because someone from Discord said that he would help me to spoof again and I haven’t heard from him since Feburary 2, 2024.