Like most apps that work with the GPS in your smartphone, Pokemon Go can tell a lot of things about you based on your movement as you play: Where you go, when you went there, how you got there, how long you stayed, and who else was there. And, like many developers who build those apps, Niantic keeps that information.
According to the Pokemon Go privacy policy, Niantic may collect — among other things — your email address, IP address, the web page you were using before logging into Pokemon Go, your user name, and your location. And if you use your Google account for sign-in, unless you specifically revoke it, Niantic has access to your entire Google account. That means Niantic has read and write access to your email, Google Drive docs, and more. (It also means that if the Niantic servers are hacked, whoever hacked the servers would potentially have access to your entire Google account. And you can bet the game’s extreme popularity has made it a target for hackers. Given the number of children playing the game, that’s a scary thought.) You can check what kind of access Niantic has to your Google account here.
My IT expert girlfriend on this:
“The person who wrote this has no understanding of metrics work
Literally every web service to ever exist NEEDS your IP address to function,
email addresses are used to log in,
and they use “previous site tracking” to determine where they’re getting the most traffic from so they can better advertise there
Bullshit clickbait fear shit like this pisses me off so much
because it freaks people out unnecessarily while spreading misinformation for profit
Like they claim they have R/W authority over your email address, but
Google API literally just exists to use one-login functions and doesn’t authorize that sort of use”
TL/DR: Buzzfeed is fear mongering for profit Like usual.
fuck off buzzfeed
Here’s All The Data Pokemon Go Is Collecting From Your Phone
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