{"url":"https://www.clear.sale/blog/post/pokemon-go-success-about-fraud","title":"What the success of Pokémon Go teaches us about fraud","tldr":"As you all know, Pokémon Go is on its way to becoming the biggest mobile game ever released. The concept is simple: it is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game developed by Niantic for smartphones. In the game, players use a mobile device","markdown":"**ClearSale’s team of fraud experts is here to shed some light on how Pokémon Go can teach us a thing or two regarding fraud management for e-commerce merchants.**\n\n### 1. Prepare for trouble, make it double\n\nThe game reached nearly 23 million active users in a single day and went on to gain an additional 6 million downloads per day all within its first week on the market. Even with all the preparation it took, Niantic`s servers couldn’t handle all this activity in the first week. Many users complained about being unable to play due to the server’s instability.****\n\n****\n\nIsn’t this similar to what we experience during Black Friday? You can plan all you want, but what we’ve seen every year is that sales seem to always surpass expectations. Is your system equipped to handle all that activity without crashing? How will your fraud screening process work? These are important questions that a merchant should have in mind prior to Black Friday unless you want to risk losing sales (or risk becoming a viral internet meme that mocks your inability to please consumers!).\n\n### 2. Cheating Happens!\n\nThe game’s concept gives players incentive to leave their house and go for a walk in order to find and capture new species of Pokémon. But then, of course, there are the cheaters who see no point in walking around if they can make the game’s GPS believe they’re in Central Park when they’re actually sitting at their computer in Idaho. Niantic responded by banning people that “teleport” in the game. By “teleport” they mean that a user would appear to be in Mexico, for example, and then suddenly they would appear to be in Manhattan; this is an obvious indicator that the user is cheating.\n\nBut it’s never that easy to rid yourself of cheaters. All the cheaters had to do was make their GPS believe that they were actually walking by using tools like joysticks to crush users who actually play the game on foot. Not exactly a level playing field, is it? It is to be expected, though, as the same level of sophistication applies to fraudsters who change their strategies once they realize that merchants have discovered their latest methods of fraud.\n\nFraudsters and cheaters both result in loss. Niantic recently vowed to do whatever it takes to rid Pokémon Go of cheaters. In a similar vein, as a merchant you must do whatever it takes to combat fraud or else it will certainly negatively impact sales.\n\n### 3. Have faith in the majority\n\nCreating rules to combat fraud is never easy, but there are a lot of things the merchant must have in mind prior to implementing new rules. Niantic made the mistake of [banning the entire country of Belgium](http://comicbook.com/2016/08/19/pokemon-go-user-gets-an-entire-country-banned-from-game/) from playing Pokémon Go in an attempt to stop a group of cheaters. This was obviously a mistake on their part. Keep in mind that the majority of players are well-meaning players and you shouldn’t allow a small group of cheaters to negatively affect the way you treat the good guys."}