It was noted that “Pokemon Go” turned into one of the most popular weight loss schemes as players were required to walk a couple kilometers just to “catch them all”. The company said the permission request was added “erroneously”, and that the game only accesses basic information like a user ID and email address.
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The gist of that statement is that the app requesting full data access is a mistake, Niantic Labs only accesses basic data and they will fix the “full access” problem with the app shortly.
Pokemon GO is now out in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
As Reeve points out, it’s unlikely that Niantic, the developer of the game for Nintendo, plans to do anything nefarious.
Niantic stated overnight that the security issue was due to what they called an “erroneous permissions request”.
The developer said it would remove “full access” to Google accounts.
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., is raising privacy concerns with “Pokémon Go”, a new smartphone game that millions of users around the country have downloaded in the past week.
“I’ve revoked their access to my account, and deleted the app. I really wish I could play, it looks like great fun, but there’s no way it’s worth the risk.”
Niantic’s response should be interesting, considering the company has come under heavy scrutiny for its vague privacy policy and broad data collection.
Anyway, if you were particularly concerned about the security of your Google account (which I do go out of my way to protect), then you can perhaps rest a little bit easier with this update.
First, some context: The game rose to the top of the iOS and Android app stores in a matter of hours, and within a few days, it had beaten out Tinder for active users.
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Google settings even warn users against granting this degree of trust on its settings page: “This “full account access” privilege should only be granted to applications you fully trust”.
