The new app had more active users than Twitter.
While their scheme isn’t quite as Machiavellian as the nefarious plots that were devised by Team Rocket in the show, the creators of Pokemon Go, Niantic Labs, have moved to allay fears that the app will leave its users vulnerable to security and privacy risks.
The newly developed app harnesses the cameras on smartphones along with location-based capabilities, but that’s not all. The app is also capable of accessing even more personal information than users had originally agreed to provide, especially in relation to Google and its affiliated apps/software.
The way that the Pokémon Go app was originally structured made it possible for its creators to access, view and change almost every piece of information in its users’ Google accounts.
Private emails, documents, search history, navigation history and photos were all at risk. 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.
“We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon Go only accesses basic Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email address) and no other Google account information is or has been accessed or collected. Once we became aware of this error, we began working on a client-side fix to request permission for only basic Google profile information, in line with the data that we actually access.”
Since the app was launched, Pokemon Go has added $7.5bn to Nintendo’s value.
