5 or so accts I levelled up myself, ranging in lvls from 14 to 21, not banned.
1-no sniping
2-limit botting time to 1-2 hrs, no more
3-use built in break times
4-use built in random throws
5-**do NOT jump around the world in less than a day**. I put 4 of them in Europe, 1 in asia about 2 wks before the bans hit, left them there for over 3 wks. I then sent some of them to the east coast, the others to the west coast.
6-I also use an gps emulator to log in, making sure I'm logging into the same spot as where I signed out from. I try to do it before I level, so I can hand level them.
7-avoid softbans at all costs
8-do not log into phone within 2 hrs of logging out of bot or emulator, give the acct time to cool down, or the reverse of phone then bot.
9-act as human like as possible, mix up your log in spots & times, mix up how long you spend on. Ex: I log into times sq closer to hells kitchen one nite at 846pm, spend 1/2 hr on then log out. The next nite I might log in up by the sheeps meadow in central park at 735pm & spend 1-1.5 hrs in then log out.
Yes, it may screw with your exp levels & how fast you level up, but we've all already been beat to the full pokedex & level 40. If you want to keep your acct for whatever reason you must be "human" with your acct & how you use it. I could care less about botting, when a top player acknowledge & praised by Niantic admits he botted in the lvl 30's range it doesn't matter anymore to me. I am not in any race with some other person to be lvl 40, & I'm still sitting here with 5 botted accts still working at the moment.
But then again I'm a WoW player who used honorbuddy but doesn't IG PvP, I just hate the boring old grind, which is why I don't care about bots. I've played other MMOs that had massive grinds as you got higher, sitting in towngreen grinding combining vine with vine repeatedly or crushing leaf after leaf in my mortar & pestle just irks the heck out of me.