How to Stop Pokemon Go Having Complete Access to Your Google Account

Ya can't deny it - everyone's stoked about Pokémon Go but if you're a bit privacy conscious then you're probably not stoked to learn that Pokémon Go (and Ingress, for that matter) has complete access to everything in your Google account. Good news though, you can revoke that access.

If you're not too far into the game yet, a good idea is to make a google account especially for Pokémon Go because, well, it's easier.

This is the problem: The game takes “full account access” when you sign in with your Google account. This means Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, has access to everything in your Google account, including Gmail, Contacts, files stored in Google Drive, and has read/write permissions to all of it—and just about every other bit of data aside from your password. This is a level of access usually reserved for Google’s own apps

Here’s how to revoke it:

1. Head to your Google security page and look for Pokémon Go.

2. Select Pokémon Go and then click “Remove” to revoke full access.

3. Launch the game on your device and confirm it still works.

There have been limited tests of playing the game after doing this. Some seem to think they can't play without it (or log in) but the app also goes down a lot so it's hard to tell! 

Obviously, there’s nothing saying that Niantic is collecting this data for malicious purposes, or even to sell your data, but considering they don’t explicitly ask you for it on iOS, it’s a little surprising. Android users, however, are explicitly asked to allow this access.