Thanks to Pokémon GO most of us have been frantically running around chasing Pokémon for the past few weeks, but did you know that the app currently has full access to your Google account?
Pokémon GO requires avid Pokémon trainers to sign into the game using their Google account. By doing this, users are unknowingly granting the app full access to all their account information. This means that the app has access to your emails, all your Google documents, Google photos and a lot more.
Niantic has stated that this was an error and that they were working on a fix that will only request permission for 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. 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.
This issue only seems to affect iOS users. Hopefully, Niantic fixes this quickly so that we can all get back to what matters, getting those ultra rare Pokémon.
