I figured I’d post this because I don’t see anyone else talking about it and it bothers me. If you didn’t know, Pokemon Go is the latest in the long running series of games from Nintendo (although Go is actually made by a developer called Niantic). It’s also the first (I think) to run on your phone. Needless to say, it’s a huge hit. And it looks like a ton of fun - pretty much everyone I know is playing it.

But there’s a problem.

To play the game you need an account. Weirdly, Niantic won’t let you just create one - you need to sign in with an existing account from one of two services - the pokemon.com website or Google. Now the Pokemon site is for some reason not accepting new signups right now so if you’re not already registered there you’ll need to use a Google account - and that’s where the fun begins.

I started the game, hit the Google button, and was redirected to log in. Normally you’d see a little message saying what data the app is going to be able to access - something like “This app will be able to view your email address and name”. For some reason that’s not shown in this case, but I went ahead and logged in anyway. Then on a whim I went to see which permissions it was granted (you can see for your own account right here).

http://www.michellhilton.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-login-google.html

michellhilton:
I figured I’d post this because I don’t see anyone else talking about it and it bothers me. If you didn’t know, Pokemon Go is the latest in the long running series of games from Nintendo (although Go is actually made by a developer called Niantic). It’s also the first (I think) to run on your phone. Needless to say, it’s a huge hit. And it looks like a ton of fun - pretty much everyone I know is playing it.

But there’s a problem.

To play the game you need an account. Weirdly, Niantic won’t let you just create one - you need to sign in with an existing account from one of two services - the pokemon.com website or Google. Now the Pokemon site is for some reason not accepting new signups right now so if you’re not already registered there you’ll need to use a Google account - and that’s where the fun begins.

I started the game, hit the Google button, and was redirected to log in. Normally you’d see a little message saying what data the app is going to be able to access - something like “This app will be able to view your email address and name”. For some reason that’s not shown in this case, but I went ahead and logged in anyway. Then on a whim I went to see which permissions it was granted (you can see for your own account right here).

http://www.michellhilton.com/2016/07/pokemon-go-login-google.html

There are apks of the game which have malware. You'd be prone to such if you sideloaded the game, which would be the case if it's not yet in your region.

Not sure whether that's the case with you, but it's a possibility.