{"id":3008,"date":"2016-08-16T17:24:13","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T22:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2016-08-16T17:24:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T22:24:13","slug":"pokemongo-privacy-need-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/pokemongo-privacy-need-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Pok\u00e9monGo and Your Privacy: What You Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pok\u00e9monGo\u2019s app was recently updated \u2014 even though its first release was only in July of this year \u2014 due to the fact that the original app poses some significant privacy concerns for users.\u00a0 The chief privacy concern is that the app requests and receives full access to the Google accounts of users who login to it. In the updated version of the app, which users are being encouraged to download, the app and game developers only have access to the user\u2019s basic account information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Privacy Concerns and Pok\u00e9monGo <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before the recent update to the Pok\u00e9monGo app, users who logged in to the game with Google were required to give full access to their Google account. This allowed the app to have access to a large amount of users\u2019 personal information. The app could access a user\u2019s Gmail, important documents, and other personal data that they had stored in their Google account. For this reason, the initial version of the Pok\u00e9monGo app posed a significant security risk factor.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/olympians-couldnt-play-pokemon-go-and-they-were-pretty-upset\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read More: Olympians Couldn\u2019t Play Pok\u00e9mon GO and They Were Pretty Upset<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Pok\u00e9monGo Makes a Change<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The good news for users of this popular game is that along with addressing security concerns in the new version of Pok\u00e9monGo, the company has provided assurance that they never actually collected or stored significant amounts of private data about its users. The makers contend, and outside sources verify, that the initial account access request was a mere error that the Niantic team never exploited for any sinister purposes.<\/p>\n<p>The app did, however, track the location of the devices upon which the game was played, as well as track recently viewed webpages from the user\u2019s browsing history. Much of this information was collected simply to enhance the user\u2019s enjoyment of the game by allowing the game to place its creatures in real-world locations that the user would encounter.<\/p>\n<p>In order to eliminate the previously discussed privacy concern completely, users of the Pok\u00e9monGo game are advised to logout of their Google account and download the updated version of the app. After downloading the newer version of the app, users are encouraged to go into their Google account\u2019s \u2018Privacy and Security\u2019 settings and check their \u2018Connected Apps and Sites\u2019 to ensure that the app no longer has full access to the account.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/antivirus-acelerador-limpeza-android\/total\/\">PSafe Total<\/a><\/strong> can enhance a user\u2019s security even further with its anti-virus software that combats attacks on the user\u2019s Android device by malicious online threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Privacy is a significant concern when downloading apps. Even games such as Pok\u00e9monGo pose some concerns that many users may have heard about recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[316,1562,1565,218,545,249],"class_list":["post-3008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","tag-games","tag-pokemon","tag-pokemon-go","tag-privacy","tag-safety","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.psafe.com\/en\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}