Originally published by Bernard Marr on LinkedIn: Pokémon GO: The One Serious Problem Everyone Should Worry About
Unless you’ve been living under a Snorlax, you’ve probably heard about the wildly popular new augmented reality game, Pokémon Go.
The game uses your smartphone’s camera, GPS, and position sensors to tell the game what to display and where, creating the illusion that cute little cartoon “pocket monsters” are standing in your living room, on the sidewalk outside, or in the park nearby. You grab free Pokéballs (to catch the critters, naturally) at local sites of historical interest. And businesses can purchase Pokémon “lures” as advertising to draw imaginary monsters and real fans to their physical location.
It’s a digital world overlayed over the real world, and it’s insanely popular. As of the writing of this article, reports said it had already been downloaded 7.5 million times.
But the way the phone works requires data — and lots of it — and problems have arisen with what the app collects, and what the company is doing with it.
News began to percolate that the game required full access to your Google account when you sign in. Full access allows the app — and the company — to “see and modify nearly all information in your Google Account,” according to Google’s My Account privacy controls. It doesn’t have access to passwords or payment information, but it can read your emails, see what you’ve been searching, and more.
The company, Niantic, said the request was a mistake and has reportedly changed the access requirement in updates to the game. But the question remains: Why did so many users give a game designed for 10-year-olds full access to everything Google knows about them?
It’s just one example of a systemic problem: We give away our data far too easily.
Especially with apps, where we download something for free and want to start using it quickly, people never read the lengthy terms of service agreements they’re happily agreeing to, and don’t understand the full extent of the information they’re voluntarily giving away.
Pokémon Go, for example uses your phone’s location, your IP address, and the webpage you most recently visited before playing, all connected with your real name and account information, according to the game’s privacy policy.
It uses a Google map and your real-world GPS location to direct you to Pokémon you can catch. But that information can be misused. Already, stories are circulating of criminals targeting Pokémon players for robberies, and a man who claims he was dumped after his girlfriend discovered he was cheating by looking at his game history — and these are just people exploiting the nature of the game, not hacking anyone’s data.