There was a bit of a panic yesterday regarding Pokemon Go and people who were using a Google Account with the game. It was revealed that the iOS version of the game offered full access permission to the app. People worried that this meant Niantic could possibly get our private information. Fortunately, it’s since been discovered that this was due to an error and Niantic has issued an official statement and is addressing the issue.
Basically, the Pokemon Go mistake made it seem like Niantic could have completely had the potential to access your account, getting full permission to possibly see biographical information or other more personal details. In actuality, the game is only accessing your email address and user ID.
Here’s the full statement that Niantic gave to Gizmodo .
“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. 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.”
Consider this an all-clear. Pokemon Go is okay. It’s going to be fixed to be sure it doesn’t have full access permission. Feel free to (safely) go out and catch those Eevees and Oddishes.
Source: Gizmodo