The Pokemon craze has conquered the world once again, years after their television run ended, and this time, it started with the recent release of the Pokemon Go game for Android and iOS mobile devices last week.
While the game is in a limited and very slow release, millions of people are already playing it and want even more, but for now they can't.
One of the people who had the “privilege” of installing the game was Adam Reeve, who noticed something strange during the registration process.
In its current form, users who want to play the game must register with the app. Unfortunately, the app doesn't allow users to create accounts, but instead asks them to log in using their pokemon.com or Google account.
Because the website pokemon.com has disabled registrations, likely due to the very large number of users flooding its servers, the only feasible method for a new user to play the game is to use their Google account.
During the sign-up process, Adam noticed something strange. While authenticating the app with his Google account, he didn't see the intermediate screen where Google usually shows in detail the type of data the app can access from the user's Google account.
After validating the app, regardless of the screen that didn't appear, Adam visited the "Apps connected to your account" page, where Google records the type of data each app can access on behalf .
To his surprise, the app had automatically been granted full access to his account, even though such an intrusive setting had never been requested.
And by full access, Google really an app full access! This includes the ability to read the content of emails, send emails using your name, plus it gives access to private Google Drive or Google Photos files, can see maps or search history, and a bunch of other things you probably wouldn't want everyone to have access to.
"Now, I obviously don't think Niantic [the developers of Pokemon Go] are planning some kind of global 'heist' of personal information," Adam writes on his Tumblr. "This is likely the result of an epic oversight."
This behavior appears to be limited to some iOS devices (not all) and does not affect Android users. However, iOS users should visit this page and see what permissions the app has been granted and if they are not okay with them they should simply uninstall the app.
