The IT Nerd

In the last few days, Pokemon Go has become a sensation with everyone and their dog wanting to play this augmented reality mobile game. However, it’s facing no end of issues and has become the poster child of the law of unintended consequences:

• Because it requires players to travel to real-world destinations in order to stock up on Poke Balls, eggs, and potions, and the like, some individuals have been capitalizing on the game’s mechanics to trap and rob its players.
• A woman jumped a fence to capture a nearby Pokemon, but instead discovered the dead body of a man who is believed to have drowned in the Big Wind River. According to the local police department, “There is no evidence at this time that would indicate foul play.”
• Perhaps the worst thing to happen is that it has been discovered that Pokemon Go grants full access to a user’s Google account linked during the iOS sign-up process. That means the developer of the app is theoretically capable of viewing and modifying nearly all information stored in your Google account, including your Gmail messages, Google Drive documents, Google Maps navigation history, search history, and personal photos stored on Google Photos. For its part, Niantic who makes the game on behalf of Nintendo tells The Verge that the company did not intend to request full Google account access and will issue a client-side fix to reduce the number of permissions.

Lovely. It really shows how something that in is theory good, can go so wrong. So much so that maybe you should think twice about playing this game. But at least the stock value of Nintendo as shot up and for the first time in years, they’re actually relevant.

This entry was posted on July 12, 2016 at 7:58 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Nintendo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.