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Niantic opens up about disabling third-party services and the most recent account bans

Privacy? What privacy?

Niantic opens up about disabling third-party services and the most recent account bans
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| Pokemon GO

Where the Pokemon GO hype has settled into a more laid-back affair, it doesn't mean that the fans aren't still royally peeved about the loss of the tracking feature and now the more frequent account bans.

Yesterday Niantic released a statement explaining its motives, keeping us all up to date as opposed to using the silent treatment as it did initially.

A representative stated on their website that despite people's frustrations in Niantic shutting down the third-party add-ons, they were doing it for the integrity of the game and the health of their servers. "Some players may not have realized that some add-on map apps do more than just show you nearby Pokémon. Each end-user app can be used as a collection tool by the app creator, invisibly collecting and forwarding data to the app creator with or without the knowledge of the end user."

They go on further to explain that this is the primary reason behind temporarily banning select accounts that had been using said third-party tracker apps. In using it Niantic said that it could leave their servers open to DDoS attacks and that they're now working on unbanning accounts.

Check out Niantic's post here if you want to read more on the issue.

Emily Sowden
Emily Sowden
Emily is Pocket Gamer's News Editor and writes about all kinds of game-related things. She needs coffee to function and begrudgingly loves her Switch more than she lets on.