Pokemon Go

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 seems to be a risk.

ACCOUNT

To play the game you need an account. Weirdly, the game developer 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 . To say I was a little stunned is putting it lightly – it said:

Pokemon Go has full access to your Google account

Here are a couple of excerpts from the Google help page about what this means:

When you grant full account access, the application can see and modify nearly all information in your Google Account

This “Full account access” privilege should only be granted to applications you fully trust, and which are installed on your personal computer, phone, or tablet.

RISK

he risk for this – Pokemon Go and Niantic can now:

• Read all your email
• Send email as you
• Access all your Google drive documents (including deleting them)
• Look at your search history and your Maps navigation history
• Access any private photos you may store in Google Photos
• And a maybe more

And they have no need to do this – when a developer sets up the “Sign in with Google” functionality they specify what level of access they want – best practices (and simple logic) dictate you ask for the minimum you actually need, which is usually just simple contact information.

This is probably just the result of epic carelessness. But I don’t know anything about their security policies. I don’t know how well they will guard this awesome new power they’ve granted themselves, and frankly I don’t trust them at all. I’ve revoked their access to my account, and deleted the app.
I really wish I could play, it looks like great fun, is it  worth the risk?