In order to play Pokemon Go, players need an account. If you are one of them, you have got some catching up to do and need to find PokeStops and Gyms in Pokemon GO quickly.
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But a patch is on the way, thanks to an indication from Apple.
Further tests by ZDNet revealed that the Pokemon Go app does not ask for permission for access this amount of data and instead jumps straight to the app’s T&C’s which do not mention anything about levels of access the app requires. As a result, they chose not to install the update – and shortly thereafter, the patch was pulled from TestFlight.
Jason Hong, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said that it depends on how Niatic, the company that developed “Pokemon Go”, uses it.
Adam Reeve, an employee at security analytics firm RedOwl, points out that some iOS users have been granting the Pokemon Go app full access to their Google Accounts, which could allow strangers to read their emails and access documents.
Pokemon Go has increased Japan’s Nintendo Co Ltd’s (7974.T) market share by a whopping $7.5 billion in merely two days after its release.
And, like many developers who build those apps, Niantic keeps that information.
Pokemon Go, Niantic’s augmented reality game where you catch Pokemon in real world locations using your smartphone camera, has taken the world by storm.
The issue seems to be limited to people who play the game on iOS, and not everyone’s account has been affected.
That includes access to email, according to Google.
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Users have found that the app is granting full account access to their Google account without asking their permission. Niantic has admitted that there is a privacy issue but they’ve also stressed that they plan on using/storing no information other than the basic Google profile information. The company said the permission request was added “erroneously”, and that the game only accesses basic information like a user ID and email address.
