New Pokemon Go Glitch Can Cause Players to Log Into Other Accounts

A disturbing Pokemon Go glitch can inadvertently cause new players to login to other player's accounts, giving them unfettered access to that player's Pokemon and items.

Yesterday on Reddit, a player named "redfoxkiller" made a post about a disturbing discovery when he recently made a new Pokemon Go account for his nephew. When the player used a Pokemon Trainer's Club account to log into what should have been an untouched account, he discovered that he instead had access to an existing account for a player from Belgium. The player suddenly had full control of the account, ranging from the ability to transfer Pokemon to deleting items.

It appears that Niantic accidentally linked the newly created Pokemon Trainer's Club login to an existing player ID instead of creating a new one for the player. However, when the player tried to address the issue with Niantic, he received a boilerplate response stating that there wasn't a solution to the problem.

When "redfoxkiller" made the post on Reddit, another player found previous other examples that suggested that this issue has been happening for several months. Since Niantic has refused to address the issue, the player resorted to changing one of the player's Pokemon's name to his email in hopes of warning the player himself.

Of course, this discovery has a lot of worrisome and wide-ranging problems. If this problem continues, players could lose their entire accounts because a new player accidentally deletes a bunch of existing Pokemon. The account could also be flagged by Pokemon Go's anti-cheat system, as logging in from multiple devices could be misconstrued as cheating.

The really disturbing part is that Niantic didn't take the player's claim seriously. By brushing off the problem, Niantic is potentially leaving the door open for more incidents like this to occur. Let's hope that Reddit "boosting the signal" of this issue gets someone at Niantic's notice, so they can resolve this issue and make sure it's just an isolated incident.