Pokemon GO may not prove an immediate boost to Nintendo’s bottom line: it is free and Nintendo is not the sole investor or creator. The game is also being played an average of 43 minutes a day, more time spent than on WhatsApp or Instagram, it added. Apps that use Google’s or Facebook’s authentication system are fairly common.
Advertisement
Officers in the northern city of Darwin also took to the social media website to advise users that while their police station featured as a “Pokestop” – locations where players can pick up supplies – gamers did not have to enter it to get the items.
That includes access to email, according to Google.
Bar a steady stream of new gameplay features, the Pokémon Go craze will probably die down, but the geo-located, augmented reality style of gaming is here to stay.
Lastly for the Rare candy, you will need to locate and hunt down the Rare Pokemon. Even if the developers have the best of intentions, the huge popularity of the app and its access to sensitive data would surely make it a target for hackers.
Users have found that the app is granting full account access to their Google account without asking their permission.
Unable to keep up with demand and in a bid to stops its servers from crashing, developers Niantic had to delay the release of the game in South America, UK and Europe.
“I obviously don’t think Niantic are planning some global personal information heist”.
However, Reeve told Gizmodo that he wasn’t “100 percent sure” that the things he wrote on his blog post were true. But I don’t know anything about Niantic’s security policies. I’ve revoked their access to my account, and deleted the app.
This is not the first time an app has posed security risk by seeking access to information it shouldn’t do. “We may use this information to provide the Services and to improve and personalize our Services for you (or your authorized child)”.
The app is available for Apple users but you will have to create a different account in one of these three countries – US, NZ, Aus.
Niantic says they are working to issue a fix, but players may want to be cautious in the meantime.
They said in a statement that the game accessed only user IDs and email addresses of players, “and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected”.
Advertisement
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”.
