• News

Pokémon Go Shouldn't Actually Have All Those Account Permissions

You've no doubt heard about the permission problems going around today. Niantic is setting them straight. 

Brittany Vincent

July 11, 2016 8:58 PM

2

Earlier, Pokemon Go was reported to have been requesting access for various permissions via Google accounts that are tied to each Pokemon Go user. This obviously didn't sit well with users, who were suddenly being faced with the stark reality that this simple app could gain full access to their entire Google accounts with the ability to modify information, send emails and other nefarious actions that wouldn't be good news if a third party were to somehow get in contact with the account.

Niantic has come forward with an official statement on the issues, noting that the request for full access is actually a mistake ("erroneous," Niantic calls it) and that the game is only supposed to access basic Google account information like email addresses and user IDs. The company is working on a client-side fix to resolve the issue so that the app only requests permission for this type of information in the future. The company also attests that no personal information or sensitive information has been accessed by the app.

This previously had supposedly only affected players on iOS who chose to log in with their Google account. The full statement is below, if you're curious:

“We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously request full access permission for the user’s Google account. However, Pokémon Go only accesses basically Google profile information (specifically, your User ID and email addresses) 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. Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon Go or Niantic. Google will soon reduce Pokémon Go’s permission to only the basic profile data that Pokémon Go needs, and users do not need to take any actions themselves.”

For right now, if you're planning on using the app with your Google account, you might want to consider using it with a throwaway email address just in case. That kind of thing is always best for these types of situations anyway and it only takes a few minutes.

Brittany Vincent

Senior Editor

Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!