Gawker points to some strong claims made by other people on the internet. *reddit We all know how reliable people on the internet are. Also Gawker file for bankraupcy back in June. So I am unsure of their motive.
Skip the end of the article, it is complete trash.
Nevertheless, the idea of a spying machine made from a beloved franchise gave me bad bad anxiety. So I needed to investigate. I haven't noticed huge jumps in my data usage with pokemon go. Usually, refreshing it will add kilobytes to my data usage. I have experience 3-4 mb jumps in my data usage. This is easily enough for a high resolution image. Possibly evidence. No effective conclusions can be drawn because of other possible background services on my phone. (Also probably spying on us.)
I decided to look in to the game files. *Android Version
I found that it was written with the unity game engine. Big woopidity doo. Probably not important, but as I was digging through the files (examining with a hex editor) I found sequences of numbers that appear to be ip addresses. Check out this file. pokegoExtractedFolder\assets\bin\Data\Managed\Metadata\global-metadata.dat In notepad 2 it was more readable. Searching for 2.5.29.14 will get you close to a group of them. One that I looked up was a french phone store.
gawker click bait? the "we will give info to the government" part of the eula is nothing new and odds are you have already said yes on 20 other apps and sites to the exact same thing. if you have a problem with it, too bad cause their really is no way to stay private completely these days. even if you have and use absolutely nothing that uses electricity and go lives in the middle of nowhere, they will still see you on satellite and drones. if you have a phone, the government will have access to it. if you have a computer with internet, the government will know a lot of what you do if not everything if they ask a few company's. privacy at the level we had 100 years ago is dead and gone.
So we do what? Roll over and let them do whatever they like? Might as well just install webcams all over your house and livestream your whole life then.
not what im saying, im saying fight this in the government by contacting your congress critters or running yourself. what pokemon go is doing is what everyone is doing which is following the laws of the land and handing over data when the government says to. it's not a conspiracy. the "tin foil hats" have been saying this for years and no one listened and now it's normal. if you dont like it talk to your representative. the pokemon go is more popular then porn atm on google so gawker is trying to paint them as the big bad villain here to get clicks and add money.
It doesnt have to be your government, but since you seem to be digging into it I'm going to list whatever comes up to my mind.
So that said.
For that app's quality it'd be extremely convenient to pull picture from situation which doesn't fit into the Google Maps profile. App wins, Google does the job? and wins.
Surely its easier for everyone if "Government" asks from Twitter & Google instead digesting random pile of shit themselves.
You can expect every single app spy you, its how they work. Also probably app will tell you to contact data buyers but not listing any of them anywhere. Fun times.
I'm sorry if someone here is Unity fan, but Pokémon GO looks to my eyes like Unity PC game.
Do you live in France? if not then its funny I think if app sends from whole west all the shit to lonely French phone store. :D
Whats there to get, are you looking for like list of places that app connects into and through that make your assumptions why would it connect there?
Not honestly interested digesting Pokémon Go, but since I'm using Freedome VPN in my phone I can try using only Pokemon GO and log the tracking attempts. If I have understood right I should get the results in neat map. :D
When tethering, random file download speeds are in the 2-3 mbs region on the pc. When pogo runs on the phone those downloads drop to like 500k and stay there. Spyware confirmed lol.