Since early August 2016, Niantic Labs has actively been shutting down several third-party servers and trackers that link to "Pokemon Go" servers, alleging that these were violating their terms of service. The game creator cited that the "Pokemon Go" trackers were a form of cheating, which gave players a certain advantage over those who played the mobile game without any aid.
Both very popular and budding websites where shut down by the "Pokemon Go" maker immediately. When players visit some websites, they will most likely find a notice that the tracker has violated the terms of service of Niantic and will no longer be available. Other "Pokemon Go" trainers will simply notice that their tracker has stopped working in-game.
SilphRoad Reddit has a thread by user ktchong which revealed that the additional third-party trackers that the "Pokemon Go" creator has shut down so far include the following below. The user noted that the five named "Pokemon Go" trackers immediately stopped working within a day. Niantic apparently blocked all scanning and tracking activities, although he believes that players and developers will continue to attempt to work around the huge crackdown in the following days.
1. PokeFinder
2. PokeMesh
3. Pokemon Go Live Map
4. PokeScanner
5. Smart Poke V2
The Bitbag reported that the third-party "Pokemon Go" trackers will no longer work due to particular changes in the data of the game. The changes in minimum delay in map requests were upped from five to 10 seconds and the game will not forward data to applications that were programmed using the previous delay of five seconds. As a result, trackers for wild Pokemon for "Pokemon Go" will not function properly. However, the tracker may still function if it is programed using the new map request delay. More protective codes may also have been prepared by Niantic to keep more third-party tools from accessing the data.
Overall, the major crackdown on third-party "Pokemon Go" trackers will convince players to rely on the in-game Pokemon Nearby system to look for wild Pokemon. "Pokemon Go" players, however, are hoping that Niantic can introduce more improvements that offer more accuracy.
